ABSTRACT
In his first book, The Regulation and Reform of the American Banking System, 1900-1929 (1984), Eugene N. White, professor of economics at Rutgers University and research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, discussed the rise of the Federal Reserve System and why the system, for all the benefits that came from it, proved no panacea for the structural problems besetting the U.S. banking system. In The Comptroller and the Supervision of American Banking 1960-1990 (1992), White focused on the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s response to the dismantling of the restrictive rules put in place after the Great Depression and the effects of this deregulation on the banking system. In these books and other writings, White combined a solid grasp of economic theory with a historian’s flair for narrative and analysis.
