This book describes revolutionary developments in American finance and proposes regulatory reforms aimed at strengthening
the stability of financial markets and reducing the need for government support and oversight of financial
institutions.
The author is the Arthur F. Burns Professor of Free and
Competitive Enterprise at the Graduate School of Business of Columbia University.
Dramatic changes in information and telecommunications technologies have transformed U.S. financial markets in the 1980s and 1990s. Traditional financial intermediaries, such as banks, have had to change what they do and how they do it in response to a steady stream of new financial products and instruments that have crumpled the competitive barriers that historically separated financial institutions in the United States.