Reviews

The great mystery story in American politics these days is why, over the course of two presidential administrations (one from each party), there’s been no serious federal criminal investigation of Wall Street during a period of what appears to be epic corruption. People on the outside have speculated and come up with dozens of possible reasons, some plausible, some tending toward the conspiratorial – but there have been very few who’ve come at the issue from the inside. We get one of those rare inside accounts in The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins…. [T]hose interested in understanding the mindset of the people who should be leading the anti-corruption charge ought to read this book. It’s the weird lack of concern that shines through…On the outside we can only deduce the mindset from actions and non-actions, but Connaughton’s actually seen it, and with the book you get to see it too. It’s scary and definitely worth a read.

You want the real skinny on HFT and the SEC? Read The Payoff. This guy [Jeff Connaughton] worked with Sen Kaufman, our champ!

If you feel like justice was thwarted during the financial crisis, if you feel like the market’s been rigged for the insiders and there’s no check on it, you’ve got an ally in Jeff Connaughton….[The Payoff is] an insider’s guide to what’s gone wrong in Washington, by somebody who made millions as a professional insider.

Anyone interested in how Washington works will find The Payoff impossible to put down.

Connaughton shares new details from the Brown-Kaufman crusade, which will be gripping to anyone interested in taming overgrown banks. But the book’s most important contribution, I think, is to tell the story of corporate influence over financial policymaking dating back several decades. You can pretty much feel the acid gushing into your stomach as you read it…. I can’t recommend the book enough.

If you want to know how this all happened, how it got so bad and has not become better, author Jeff Connaughton explains it in his new book, “The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins.” On top of everything else, the American middle class is being systematically robbed by the corruption of Washington, namely by Wall Street. This corrupt nexus of money and power is why the economy collapsed, why it isn’t getting better, and why the middle class is fighting for its life.

Weak U.S. legal oversight puts burden on compliance pros to protect their firms, author says.

A must read if you’re interested in the corrupting influence of lobbyists, the revolving door between Wall Street and those that govern and regulate the financial services industry, and how huge, and ultimately untraceable, amounts of money grease the wheels of government at every step.

Mr. Connaughton is a fascinating witness and raconteur because he has been through the revolving door several times: in between work in the Senate and the Clinton White House, he spent 12 years in one of Washington’s top lobbying firms. This author has really lived in and understood the Wall Street-Washington corridor. The book is partly about his education — and ultimate disappointment, most of all with the Obama administration but definitely with both parties.

This is the most honest book I’ve read about Washington in years – it really tells it like it is.

Kaufman’s chief of staff at the time, Jeff Connaughton, was even more scathing toward the Obama Administration. Attorney General Eric Holder, he noted, ‘said in his swearing-in that he would make it a priority. We thought we were making sure that they were doing the right thing, and they said all the right things in hearings, and nothing happened. I feel gamed by it.

It is in fact one of the best books on how corporate criminals manipulate the system to get away with their crimes.