Simon Johnson: Why Does Wall Street Always Win?

Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and co-author of “White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You.”

After a long summer of high-profile scandals — JPMorgan Chase trading, Barclays rate-fixing, HSBC money laundering and more — the debate about the financial sector is becoming livelier.

Why has it become so excessively dominated by relatively few very large companies? What damage can it do to the rest of us? What reasonable policy changes could bring global megabanks more nearly under control? And why is this unlikely to happen?

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