Jimmy Stewart Is Dead: Ending the Worlds Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking

"Kotlikoff grabs us by the collar, brilliantly unveiling the truth about our financial system. With scintillating arguments, vivid examples, and terrific wit, he offers a powerful reform that stops banks from gambling and restricts them to their legitimate purpose, ′connecting borrowers to lenders and savers to investors.′ This is economics at its very best: deeply insightful and powerfully useful. It will change the global debate."—JEFFREY SACHS, Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development & Professor of Health Policy and Management, Columbia University "Financial reform needs something simple, clear, and, most of all, effective. Read this book to get and understand the answer."—GEORGE SHULTZ, Distinguished Fellow, the Hoover Institution, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and former U.S. Secretary of State "At last! A real financial page–turner. Kotlikoff calls out the bad actors behind the financial crisis and nails them cold. But he also tells us how to prevent it from happening again. It′s called Limited Purpose Banking. Anyone can read this book—and everyone should."—SCOTT BURNS, financial columnist, Universal Press Syndicate "This book is must reading for everyone who cares about the future of the American economy."—ROBERT W. FOGEL, Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, Nobel Laureate in Economics "Jimmy Stewart Is Dead is a page–turner, as fast–paced as The Simpsons, with new insights on every page. As fun as it is, Jimmy Stewart is also deadly serious. It describes our deep financial problems and offers an amazingly simple financial fix to prevent an even worse crash. Everyone should read this book."—GEORGE AKERLOF, Koshland Professor of Economics, University of California at Berkeley, Nobel Laureate in Economics "Kotlikoff′s book makes an impassioned, coherent, and convincing case for Limited Purpose Banking."—ROBERT E. LUCAS Jr., John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago, Nobel Laureate in Economics "Kotlikoff is right. Unless we institute fundamental reforms, there will be an even greater crisis. This well–written book is a must–read for those concerned with reforming the financial system."—EDWARD C. PRESCOTT, W. P. Carey Chair of Economics, Arizona State University, Nobel Laureate in Economics "Certainly we need to abandon today′s hazardous financial system. Kotlikoff′s Limited Purpose Banking plan is one of the best visions to surface so far."—EDMUND PHELPS, McVickar Professor of Political Economy, Columbia University, Nobel Laureate in Economics

Foreword by Jeffrey Sachs. Preface. Acknowledgments. Chapter 1. It’s a Horrible Mess. Chapter 2. The Big Con: Financial Malfeasance, American Style. Chapter 3. Uncle Sam’s Dangerous Medicine. Chapter 4. “This Sucker Could Go Down”. Chapter 5. Limited Purpose Banking. Chapter 6. Getting from Here to There. Chapter 7. What About? Chapter 8. Conclusion. Afterword. Fixing the Rest of Our Economic Mess. Notes. About the Author. Index.

LAURENCE J. KOTLIKOFF is a William Fairfield Warren Professor of Economics at Boston University, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Fellow of the Econometric Society, and former Senior Economist, President′s Council of Economic Advisers. Coauthor of The Coming Generational Storm and Spend ′Til the End and author of The Healthcare Fix , and Bloomberg columnist, Kotlikoff publishes extensively in the nation′s leading newspapers, magazines, and financial websites on financial reform, taxes, saving, growth, deficits, Social Security, healthcare, pensions, and personal finance.