A Timely Guide to Banking, and Why Banks Fail

Wealth meanagers and their clients couldn’t ask for a better pocket guide to banking than Bank Failures:  as American as Apple Pie, by veteran financial historian John Steele Gordon.  Although the article appears in the latest online issue of the once beloved American Heritage magazine, the closing section suggests Gordon may have written it in the wake of the S&L crisis. Even so, this quick, readable trip through financial history is timely. Especially this century-old quote from Walter Bagehot:

“Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone.”