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Sep 11, 2014StarGladiator rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Not only a classic book, but it provided the New Dealers with ammo to push their platform through congress! It will appear old when you read it, but everything Brandeis explains is just as applicable today. In this book, repeating something from his testimony before congress [of which there were many], Brandeis explains an abstract but most important point: that when someone [today it would be a bank or private equity firm, usually] comes out with a securities issuance - - selling bonds to raise money for one firm or another - - it is really about transferring ownership. For a modern example [my writing, not Justice Brandeis] take the securities sale by the Blackstone Group for AXA [giant European insurance corporation] much of which is purchased by Bank of America, a block of whose stock happens to be owned by AXA already. Through various cross-stock ownership [supposedly illegal in America, but massively practised] this represents a subtle shifting of ownership, not apparent to the public, while the interlocking cross-stock ownership in reality represents a mega-monopoly of sorts - - Blackrock owning stock in Bank of America along with the State Street Corporation, a block of whose stock in turn is owned by the Bank of America, et cetera!