The great American banking snafu.

• Author: Stowe, David W.

The Great American Banking Snafu.

The Great American Banking Snafu. Mary L. King. Lexington, $16.95. Imagine a football team with five head coaches and 50 assistants, "all with different game plans and different regulations, which confused the field officials who often were overruled by officials sitting on the bench. Also, while one coach would be calling a time-out, another would be telling the team to go for a field goal.' This is Mary King's harrowing vision of the American banking system.

King, a professor of marketing and management, blames misplaced, misguided regulation for most of our banking problems in this often-colorful survey of American banking history. While bankers themselves have contributed to the confusion, King accuses politicians of making the worst blunders. They have overregulated interstate banking and squelched healthy competition among different kinds of financial institutions, says King, while letting slide the risky investments that underlie the recent...