The Problem of Twelve, John Coates
The Problem of Twelve, John Coates
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The Problem of Twelve
When a Few Financial Institutions Control Everything

Author: John Coates

Narrator: Sean Patrick Hopkins

Unabridged: 4 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/15/2023

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included

Synopsis

The forces behind an economic crisis in the making

A “problem of twelve” arises when a small number of institutions acquire the means to exert outsized influence over the politics and economy of a nation. The Big Three index funds of Vanguard, State Street, and BlackRock control more than twenty percent of the votes of S&P 500 companies—a concentration of power that’s unprecedented in America.

Then there’s the rise of private equity funds such as the Big Four of Apollo, Blackstone, Carlyle and KKR, which has amassed $2.7 trillion of assets, and are eroding the legitimacy and accountability of American capitalism, not by controlling public companies, but by taking them over entirely, and removing them from the government’s regulation.

What can be done to check this level of power? Harvard law professor John Coates argues that only politics can fight the problem of twelve.

* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF that contains charts and illustrations from the book.

About The Author

JOHN COATES is the John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School. Before joining Harvard, he was a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, specializing in financial institutions and M&A. He has testified before Congress and provided consulting services to the Department of Justice, the Department of Treasury, and the New York Stock Exchange.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Michael

I did learn a lot from reading this one, which is my usual metric for rating nonfiction, but I'm also aware that a lot went clean over my head. Maybe I just didn't have enough baseline knowledge to come into this one. All the stuff with index funds and ETFs was familiar and interesting, but I wasn't......more

Goodreads review by Russell

I enjoy reading CGR books, especially when they're about topics I'm interested in professionally. They're generally concise and focused. The book was at its best providing me with background and context. It became a bit derivitave as a petty airing of grievances. I don't feel it will drive policy di......more

Goodreads review by Literatures

This book discusses two quite interesting topic: Index Funds and Private Equity firms. While one is public, the other is opaque and private making it hard to discern the impact they have on society and the extent of their reach. I personally feel that these are very interesting topics that I never r......more

Goodreads review by Anthony

Interesting, short summary of the potential damage of private equity and the big four index providers do to the public markets and corporations held in those markets. The warning being the true shareholders are not aligned with those ultimately with money on the line. I felt it was better described......more

Goodreads review by Richard

This is a beginners guide to index funds and private equity funds and the dangers that they can pose through having come to control very large parts of our economy. At first it isn't intuitively obvious why an index fund would cause any problems, because by its nature it is passive - a pretermined b......more

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