Banking Economics

Amidst the wreckage of financial ruin, people are left puzzling about how it happened. Where did all the problems begin? For the answer, Jack Cashill, a journalist as shrewd as he is seasoned, looks past the headlines and deep into pages of history and comes back with the goods. From Plato to payday loans, from Aristotle to AIG, from Shakespeare to the Salomon Brothers, from the Medici to Bernie Madoff—in Popes and Bankers Jack Cashill unfurls a fascinating story of credit and debt, usury and “the sordid love of gain.”

The recent credit crisis and the resulting bailout program are unprecedented events in the financial industry. While it's important to understand what got us here, it's even more important to consider how we should get out. While there is little question that immediate action was required to stabilize the situation, it is now time to look for a long-term plan to reform the United States financial industry.

Ludwig von Mises said there can never be too much of a good theory. Salerno proves it in this sweeping and nearly comprehensive audiobook on applied Austrian monetary theory. He uses the Mises/Rothbard theory of money to reinterpret historical episodes, reevaluate the history of thought, closely examine the Federal Reserve policy, seek out cause and effect in business cycles, provide a new understanding of war and social unrest, and clarify the relationship between the state and the central bank.

Did Wall Street cause the mess we are in? Should Washington place stronger regulations on the financial industry? Can we lower unemployment rates by controlling the free market? Answer: no. Not only is free-market capitalism good for the economy, it is our only hope for recovery. As the nation’s longest-serving CEO of one of the top 25 financial institutions, John Allison has had a unique inside view of the events leading up to the financial crisis.

We all heard so much about the global financial crisis in 2008 - it was in the news every day for many months. Some countries, like Greece and Portugal, were nearly bankrupted, and we heard a lot about Americans losing their homes. Do you wonder why that happened? Do you ever wonder why none of the greedy bankers and stockbrokers are in jail? In this audiobook, Wayne Armitstead describes the history that set us up for the financial crisis, who some of the players were, and what they did or didn’t do that made the crisis much worse than it needed to be.

In the 1930s, battered and humbled by the Great Depression, the US financial sector struck a grand bargain with the federal government. Bankers gained a safety net in exchange for certain curbs on their freedom: transparency rules, record-keeping and anti-fraud measures, and fiduciary responsibilities. By the free-market era of the 1980s and 90s, however, Wall Street argued that rules embodied in New Deal-era regulations to protect consumers and ultimately taxpayers were no longer needed - and government agreed.

Based on unparalleled access to those involved, and told with compelling pace and drama, The Bank That Lived a Little is the story of one of the most familiar names on the British high street since Big Bang in 1986. Philip Augar describes in detail three decades of boardroom intrigue driven by ruthless ambition, grandiose dreams and a desire for wealth. It is a tale of a struggle for long-term supremacy between rival strategies and their adherents.

Money is changing and this may mean a new world order. David Birch sets out the economic and technological imperatives concerning digital money, discussing the potential impact of it and the tensions involved - between public and private and between East and West - to contribute to the high-level debate that we must have to begin to shape the International Monetary and Financial System of the near future.

Although most Americans attribute shifting practices in the financial industry to the invisible hand of the market, Mark H. Rose reveals the degree to which presidents, legislators, regulators, and even bankers themselves have long taken an active interest in regulating the industry.

The bankruptcy of the investment bank Lehman Brothers was the pivotal event of the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed. Ever since the bankruptcy, there has been heated debate about why the Federal Reserve did not rescue Lehman in the same way it rescued other financial institutions, such as Bear Stearns and AIG. The Fed's leaders from that time, especially former Chairman Ben Bernanke, have strongly asserted that they lacked the legal authority to save Lehman because it did not have adequate collateral for the loan it needed to survive.

There have been numerous books examining the 2008 financial crisis from either a US or European perspective. Tamim Bayoumi is the first to explain how the Euro crisis and US housing crash were, in fact, parasitically intertwined. Starting in the 1980s, Bayoumi outlines the cumulative policy errors that undermined the stability of both the European and US financial sectors, highlighting the catalytic role played by European mega banks that exploited lax regulation to expand into the US market and financed unsustainable bubbles on both continents.

To save the economy and keep Citi afloat in 2008, the government provided huge infusions of cash through multiple bailouts that frustrated and angered the American public. But, as Wall Street Journal writer James Freeman and financial expert Vern McKinley reveal, the 2008 crisis was just one of many disasters Citi has experienced since its founding more than 200 years ago. In Borrowed Time they reveal Citi’s disturbing history of instability and government support. It’s a story that neither Citi nor Washington wants told.

The United States has two separate banking systems today - one serving the well-to-do and another exploiting everyone else. How the Other Half Banks contributes to the growing conversation on American inequality by highlighting one of its prime causes: unequal credit. Mehrsa Baradaran examines how a significant portion of the population, deserted by banks, is forced to wander through a Wild West of payday lenders and check-cashing services to cover emergency expenses and pay for necessities - all thanks to deregulation that began in the 1970s.

Charles H. Ferguson, who electrified the world with his Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job, now explains how a predator elite took over the country, step by step, and he exposes the networks of academic, financial, and political influence, in all recent administrations, that prepared the predators' path to conquest. Over the last several decades, the United States has undergone one of the most radical social and economic transformations in its history.

Steven Mandis charts the evolution of Goldman Sachs from an ethical standard to a legal one and uncovers the forces behind what he calls Goldman's "organizational drift". Drawing from his firsthand experience; sociological research; analysis of SEC, congressional, and other filings; and a wide array of interviews with former clients, detractors, and current and former partners, Mandis exposes the pressures that forced Goldman to slowly drift away from the very principles on which its reputation was built.

In The Hellhound of Wall Street, Michael Perino recounts in riveting detail the 1933 hearings that put Wall Street on trial for the Great Crash. Never before in American history had so many financial titans been called to account before the public, and they had come within a few weeks of emerging unscathed. By the time Ferdinand Pecora, a Sicilian immigrant and former New York prosecutor, took over as chief counsel, the investigation had dragged on ineffectively for nearly a year and was universally written off as dead....

Bitter fighting over deficits, taxes, and spending bedevils Washington, D.C., even as partisan gridlock has brought the government to the brink of default. Yet the more politicians on both sides of the aisle rant and the citizenry fumes, the more things seem to remain the same. White House Burning looks squarely at the burgeoning national debt and proposes to defuse its threat to our well-being without forcing struggling middle-class families and the elderly into poverty.

Discretion, secrecy, and subtle strategy were the weapons of choice at Wall Street investment bank Lazard Frères & Co. For more than a century, the mystique and reputation of the "Great Men" who worked there allowed the firm to garner unimaginable profits, social cachet, and outsized influence in the halls of power. But in the mid-1980s, their titanic egos started getting in the way, and the Great Men of Lazard jeopardized all they had built.

The independence of the Federal Reserve is considered a cornerstone of its identity, crucial for keeping monetary policy decisions free of electoral politics. But do we really understand what is meant by "Federal Reserve independence"? Using scores of examples from the Fed's rich history, The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve shows that much common wisdom about the nation's central bank is inaccurate.

This audiobook tells the story of the euro crisis in Cyprus from the inside. Written by the former Governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus, Panicos Demetriades, who was in office during this turbulent period, this audiobook shows how the crisis unravelled through a series of key events that occurred during his tenure. Written in chronological order and broadly based on the author’s personal diary, starting from his first day in office, this volume brings together economics, banking, regulation, governance, history, politics and international relations.