Chernow tells the story of the Morgan banking dynasty from the 1850s to the 1980s—as sobering and depressing a tale as one could ever care to read. From the earliest days onward, the Morgan crowd was invariably on the wrong side: against workers and unions, in favour of monopolists, always on the side of the super-rich. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Morgans (J. P. Morgan, Morgan Grenfell, Morgan Guaranty, Morgan Stanley, etc.) financed the rise of fascist governments in Japan, Italy, and Germany. Any Latin American despot who offered stability and profits became a client, with Juan Peron of Argentina at the top of the list. Beginning in the 1970s they tapped into Arab oil money—an effort aided by their longstanding anti-Jewish policies. They bitterly resisted any and all efforts at banking regulation, which they branded as “socialist” and “communist.” And they found ways to make money out of every war from the Civil War on. They rode the wave until finally being reduced to just another Wall St. company at the end of the dog-eat-dog cowboy financing of the 1980s.
The story is depressing, first, because the Morgans made billions from being on the wrong side; and second, because of how empty and soul-destroying their lives were. Mansions, estates, yachts, limousines, hobnobbing with royalty, gold-plated fixtures, and all their time spent thinking about how to make more money. It is hard to imagine a more boring group of people.