Unseen Power - How Mutual Funds Threaten the Political and Economic Wealth of Nations (Hardcover)

Unseen Power is an engaging, lucid, and thoughtful examination of the recent explosion in mass investment through mutual funds and pension funds. It is a startling look at the ways in which the managers of these funds have become the de facto policy makers in our modern political economy.

Vast sums of money are now in the hands of mutual fund managers -- largely because individual employees now have a more direct say in the investment of their pension funds. Defined benefit plans -- offered by employers to their employees in the decades following the Great Depression -- have given way to defined contribution plans. The result: Investment risk has been shifted from the employer onto the employee.

So much money is in the hands of mutual fund managers that Wall Street is overpowering Main Street. Managers' actions are influencing government policies and affecting the trajectories of entire stock markets. Harmes's book is a sharp warning to countries who wish to maintain their own political and cultural identities while prospering economically.