It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street

"If you want to understand why the Geithner-Summers plan won't solve the financial crisis, and why Wall Street is disgraced but still calling the shots, you can't do better than the brilliantly written and documented It Takes a Pillage, by former investment banker and financial critic Nomi Prins. As she devastatingly shows, it took a pillage to destroy the financial system, and it will take a lot more than the cozy relationship of Geithner, Bernanke, and Summers with Wall Street to rebuild the financial economy."—Robert Kuttner, co-editor, The American Prospect and author of Obama's Challenge

"Nomi Prins has applied her unmatched expertise in Wall Street's arcane methods of turning your money into their bonuses to mapping the recent crisis. In compelling, scathing prose, she shows how the key players escaped being brought to account, and kept their pet officials in power."—John Dizard, columnist, Financial Times

"No one takes Wall Street to task like Nomi Prins. But this book is far more than a pointed attack on how greed and bad regulation created a global economic meltdown—it also offers concrete prescriptions for how to prevent the next crisis. Let's hope Washington is listening."—James Ledbetter, Editor, The Big Money

"Nomi knows. Having been at Goldman Sachs, Nomi Prins knows the mind-set, knows how to read spreadsheets, knows the people, and knows Wall Street's games. Nomi knows and now Nomi tells."—Jim Hightower, author of Swim against the Current

"This book will make readers angry, as they should be. This is a lively account of the Wall Street machinations and Washington deregulation that led up to the economic crisis. Prins writes from the perspective of someone who has seen the beast from the inside, having worked as a Wall Street banker."—Dean Baker, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research