Simon Johnson, co-author of 13 Bankers, made news on the HBO show, Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night, by declaring that John Paulson should be charged with fraud. Paulson is the hedge fund manager who designed the Goldman Sachs security that was “basically a mechanism of transferring money from you to John Paulson.”

He and his co-author James Kwak were also on Bill Moyers Journal on PBS Friday night, in an hour filled with outrage and incredulity (view it here). The authors told Moyers that the big banks have become more powerful since the bailout and are using their political muscle to change the rules to favor them, spending more than $1 million a day to fight financial reform.

The book is currently at #9 on Amazon sales rankings, making it the second nonfiction title on that list, after another book on risky securities, Michael Lewis’ The Big Short. Libraries we checked are showing heavy holds on both titles.

13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown Simon Johnson, James Kwak Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Pantheon – (2010-03-30) ISBN / EAN: 0307379051 / 9780307379054

Available as Adobe EPUB eBook from OverDrive.

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