Other People's Money

Louis D. Brandeis (1856 - 1941)

Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It is a collection of essays written by Louis Brandeis published as a book in 1914. The book attacked the use of investment funds to promote the consolidation of various industries under the control of a small number of corporations, which Brandeis alleged were working in concert to prevent competition. Brandeis harshly criticized investment bankers who controlled large amounts of money deposited in their banks by middle-class people. The heads of these banks, Brandeis pointed out, routinely sat on the boards of railroad companies and large industrial manufacturers of various products, and routinely directed the resources of their banks to promote the interests of their own companies. These companies, in turn, sought to maintain control of their industries by crushing small businesses and stamping out innovators who developed better products to compete against them.

Brandeis supported his contentions with a discussion of the actual dollar amounts -- in millions of dollars -- controlled by specific banks, industries, and industrialists such as J. P. Morgan, noting that these interests had recently acquired a far larger proportion of American wealth than corporate entities had ever had before. He extensively cited testimony from a Congressional investigation performed by the Pujo Committee, named after Louisiana Representative Arsène Pujo, into self-serving and monopolistic business dealing.

The book received great publicity at the time, and was widely lauded by legal academics. Attention to the book was amplified by Brandeis' nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1916.(Summary by Wikipedia)

Genre(s): *Non-fiction, Business & Economics, Essays & Short Works

Language: English

Section Chapter Reader Time
Play 01 01 - Our Financial Oligarchy Andy Minter (1934-2017)
00:34:22
Play 02 02 - How The Combiners Combine Richard Kilmer (1942 - 2022)
00:32:58
Play 03 03 - Interlocking Directorates Kathleen Nelson
00:22:25
Play 04 04 - Serve One Master Only! John Kooz
00:34:52
Play 05 05 - What Publicity Can Do John Kooz
00:24:46
Play 06 06 - Where The Banker Is Superfluous John Kooz
00:35:18
Play 07 07 - Big Men And Little Business John Kooz
00:39:57
Play 08 08 - A Curse Of Bigness Richard Kilmer (1942 - 2022)
00:42:15
Play 09 09 - The Failure Of Banker-Management TriciaG
00:16:20
Play 10 10 - The Inefficiency Of The Oligarchy Kathleen Nelson
00:33:01