Politics and Banking. By Susan Hoffman. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Pp. xii, 304. $42.00.

Extract

In a very readable and thought-provoking treatise, Susan Hoffman explores the history of U.S. commercial banks, savings and loans associations, and credit unions in the context of the political structure forming and directing the behavior of these institutions. “Banks do, in large measure, what policy makers have designed them to do,” she contends (p. x).