WHAT HAS BEEN BREAKING UNITED-STATES BANKS

The last decade has been one of upheaval for the U.S. banking industry . Richard M. Salsman's Breaking the Banks, though not flawless, offers a well-framed theoretical and historical account that goes beneath pr oximate causes to the underlying sources of unsoundness among American banks. Salsman's diagnosis - that regulation has systematically weake ned the banking industry - is all the more credible for having been pu blished a year before it became publicly known that the FDIC had gone broke.