Jimmy Stewart Is Dead

We let Wall Street play craps with our financial system, our economy, and our tax dollars. The result -- we lost big time. Jimmy Stewart is Dead  is a call to return to basics with a strategy that is very much like the one used by Stewart's character George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life: banks should be no more than intermediaries between borrowers and lenders and savers and investors. The book describes in plain English and simple terms the big con underlying the big game the web of interconnected financial, political, and regulatory malfeasance that culminated in financial meltdown and brought us to our economic knees. It also proposes the financial fix. Kotlikoff's solution is an idea he has termed limited purpose banking, a simple and essentially costless change to our financial system. It limits banks to their legitimate purpose, namely connecting (intermediating between) borrowers and lenders and savers and investors. Under limited purpose banking, all banks would operate as saving institutions and mutual funds that sell safe as well as risky collections of securities to the public. As mutual funds, the banks would simply function as middlemen. They would never, themselves, own financial assets or borrow to invest in anything except assets, needed to run their mutual funds. Hence, banks would never be in a position to fail because of ill-advised financial bets. Engaging and enlightening, Jimmy Stewart is Dead introduces a strategy for no-risk banking. The book explains the tenets of the plan such as the regained government control of the money supply and the new role of insurance companies. Author Laurence Kotlikoff, a leading economist, believes there is a better way to restore trust in our financial system and get our economy rolling than by having Unce Sam pledge to always clean up the mess. Its not to let the mess happen to begin with.