A vividly told history of greed and its greatest practitioners in the last forty years, and how it gave rise to our current economic ills.As Jeff Madrick makes clear in a narrative at once sweeping and incisive, the single-minded pursuit of huge personal wealth did not start in the 2000s but has been on the rise in the United States since the 1970s, led by a few individuals who argued that self-interest guides society more effectively than community concerns.In telling the stories of these politicians, economists, and financiers--who declared a moral battle for freedom but gave rise to an age of greed--Madrick traces the lineage of some of our nation's most pressing economic problems. He begins with Walter Wriston, head of what would become Citicorp, who led the battle against government regulation. He examines the ideas of economist Milton Friedman, who created the plan for an anti- Rooseveltian America; the politically expedient decisions of Richard Nixon that…
