Lords of Finance

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9781594201820
Total Pages : 584 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (18 download)

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Book Synopsis Lords of Finance by : Liaquat Ahamed

Download or read book Lords of Finance written by Liaquat Ahamed and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression occurred as a result of poor decisions on the part of four central bankers who jointly attempted to reconstruct international finance by reinstating the gold standard.

The Lords of Easy Money

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1982166649
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (821 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lords of Easy Money by : Christopher Leonard

Download or read book The Lords of Easy Money written by Christopher Leonard and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-01-10 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestseller from business journalist Christopher Leonard infiltrates one of America’s most mysterious institutions—the Federal Reserve—to show how its policies spearheaded by Chairman Jerome Powell over the past ten years have accelerated income inequality and put our country’s economic stability at risk. If you asked most people what forces led to today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve. For most of its history, the Fed has enjoyed the fawning adoration of the press. When the economy grew, it was credited to the Fed. When the economy imploded in 2008, the Fed got credit for rescuing us. But here, for the first time, is the inside story of how the Fed has reshaped the American economy for the worse. It all started on November 3, 2010, when the Fed began a radical intervention called quantitative easing. In just a few short years, the Fed more than quadrupled the money supply with one goal: to encourage banks and other investors to extend more risky debt. Leaders at the Fed knew that they were undertaking a bold experiment that would produce few real jobs, with long-term risks that were hard to measure. But the Fed proceeded anyway…and then found itself trapped. Once it printed all that money, there was no way to withdraw it from circulation. The Fed tried several times, only to see the market start to crash, at which point the Fed turned the money spigot back on. That’s what it did when COVID hit, printing 300 years’ worth of money in a few short months. Which brings us to now: Ten years on, the gap between the rich and poor has grown dramatically, inflation is raging, and the stock market is driven by boom, busts, and bailouts. Middle-class Americans seem stuck in a stage of permanent stagnation, with wage gains wiped out by high prices even as they remain buried under credit card debt, car loan debt, and student debt. Meanwhile, the “too big to fail” banks remain bigger and more powerful than ever while the richest Americans enjoy the gains of a hyper-charged financial system. The Lords of Easy Money “skillfully” (The Wall Street Journal) tells the “fascinating” (The New York Times) tale of how quantitative easing is imperiling the American economy through the story of the one man who tried to warn us. This is the first inside story of how we really got here—and why our economy rests on such unstable ground.

13 Bankers

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Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 030747660X
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis 13 Bankers by : Simon Johnson

Download or read book 13 Bankers written by Simon Johnson and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In spite of its key role in creating the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, the American banking industry has grown bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks whose assets amount to more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, this oligarchy proved it could first hold the global economy hostage and then use its political muscle to fight off meaningful reform. 13 Bankers brilliantly charts the rise to power of the financial sector and forcefully argues that we must break up the big banks if we want to avoid future financial catastrophes. Updated, with additional analysis of the government’s recent attempt to reform the banking industry, this is a timely and expert account of our troubled political economy.

Lords of Strategy

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Publisher : Harvard Business Press
ISBN 13 : 1422157318
Total Pages : 363 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (221 download)

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Book Synopsis Lords of Strategy by : Walter Kiechel

Download or read book Lords of Strategy written by Walter Kiechel and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2010-03-03 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine, if you can, the world of business - without corporate strategy. Remarkably, fifty years ago that's the way it was. Businesses made plans, certainly, but without understanding the underlying dynamics of competition, costs, and customers. It was like trying to design a large-scale engineering project without knowing the laws of physics. But in the 1960s, four mavericks and their posses instigated a profound shift in thinking that turbocharged business as never before, with implications far beyond what even they imagined. In The Lords of Strategy, renowned business journalist and editor Walter Kiechel tells, for the first time, the story of the four men who invented corporate strategy as we know it and set in motion the modern, multibillion-dollar consulting industry: Bruce Henderson, founder of Boston Consulting Group Bill Bain, creator of Bain & Company Fred Gluck, longtime Managing Director of McKinsey & Company Michael Porter, Harvard Business School professor Providing a window into how to think about strategy today, Kiechel tells their story with novelistic flair. At times inspiring, at times nearly terrifying, this book is a revealing account of how these iconoclasts and the organizations they led revolutionized the way we think about business, changed the very soul of the corporation, and transformed the way we work.

This Time Is Different

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691152640
Total Pages : 513 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis This Time Is Different by : Carmen M. Reinhart

Download or read book This Time Is Different written by Carmen M. Reinhart and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-07 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An empirical investigation of financial crises during the last 800 years.

Tower of Basel

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Publisher : PublicAffairs
ISBN 13 : 1610392558
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Tower of Basel by : Adam LeBor

Download or read book Tower of Basel written by Adam LeBor and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tower of Basel is the first investigative history of the world's most secretive global financial institution. Based on extensive archival research in Switzerland, Britain, and the United States, and in-depth interviews with key decision-makers—including Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve; Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England; and former senior Bank for International Settlements managers and officials—Tower of Basel tells the inside story of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS): the central bankers' own bank. Created by the governors of the Bank of England and the Reichsbank in 1930, and protected by an international treaty, the BIS and its assets are legally beyond the reach of any government or jurisdiction. The bank is untouchable. Swiss authorities have no jurisdiction over the bank or its premises. The BIS has just 140 customers but made tax-free profits of 1.17 billion in 2011–2012. Since its creation, the bank has been at the heart of global events but has often gone unnoticed. Under Thomas McKittrick, the bank's American president from 1940–1946, the BIS was open for business throughout the Second World War. The BIS accepted looted Nazi gold, conducted foreign exchange deals for the Reichsbank, and was used by both the Allies and the Axis powers as a secret contact point to keep the channels of international finance open. After 1945 the BIS—still behind the scenes—for decades provided the necessary technical and administrative support for the trans-European currency project, from the first attempts to harmonize exchange rates in the late 1940s to the launch of the Euro in 2002. It now stands at the center of efforts to build a new global financial and regulatory architecture, once again proving that it has the power to shape the financial rules of our world. Yet despite its pivotal role in the financial and political history of the last century and during the economic current crisis, the BIS has remained largely unknown—until now.

The Money Lords

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Author :
Publisher : Signet Book
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 390 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (44 download)

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Book Synopsis The Money Lords by : Matthew Josephson

Download or read book The Money Lords written by Matthew Josephson and published by Signet Book. This book was released on 1972 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes material on Samuel Insull, the Van Sweringen brothers, A.P. Giannini, Robert R. Young, among others.

The Alchemists

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101605804
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis The Alchemists by : Neil Irwin

Download or read book The Alchemists written by Neil Irwin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the first fissures became visible to the naked eye in August 2007, suddenly the most powerful men in the world were three men who were never elected to public office. They were the leaders of the world’s three most important central banks: Ben Bernanke of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Mervyn King of the Bank of England, and Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank. Over the next five years, they and their fellow central bankers deployed trillions of dollars, pounds and euros to contain the waves of panic that threatened to bring down the global financial system, moving on a scale and with a speed that had no precedent. Neil Irwin’s The Alchemists is a gripping account of the most intense exercise in economic crisis management we’ve ever seen, a poker game in which the stakes have run into the trillions of dollars. The book begins in, of all places, Stockholm, Sweden, in the seventeenth century, where central banking had its rocky birth, and then progresses through a brisk but dazzling tutorial on how the central banker came to exert such vast influence over our world, from its troubled beginnings to the Age of Greenspan, bringing the reader into the present with a marvelous handle on how these figures and institutions became what they are – the possessors of extraordinary power over our collective fate. What they chose to do with those powers is the heart of the story Irwin tells. Irwin covered the Fed and other central banks from the earliest days of the crisis for the Washington Post, enjoying privileged access to leading central bankers and people close to them. His account, based on reporting that took place in 27 cities in 11 countries, is the holistic, truly global story of the central bankers’ role in the world economy we have been missing. It is a landmark reckoning with central bankers and their power, with the great financial crisis of our time, and with the history of the relationship between capitalism and the state. Definitive, revelatory, and riveting, The Alchemists shows us where money comes from—and where it may well be going.

Lords of Finance

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Author :
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1446494373
Total Pages : 578 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (464 download)

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Book Synopsis Lords of Finance by : Liaquat Ahamed

Download or read book Lords of Finance written by Liaquat Ahamed and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE. The current financial crisis has only one parallel: the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression of the 1930s, which crippled the future of an entire generation and set the stage for the horrors of the Second World War. Yet the economic meltdown could have been avoided, had it not been for the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers. In Lords of Finance, we meet these men, the four bankers who truly broke the world: the enigmatic Norman Montagu of the bank of England, Benjamin Strong of the NY Federal Reserve, the arrogant yet brilliant Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbanlk and the xenophobic Emile Moreau of the Banque de France. Their names were lost to history, their lives and actions forgotten, until now. Liaquat Ahamed tells their story in vivid and gripping detail, in a timely and arresting reminder that individuals - their ambitions, limitations and human nature - lie at the very heart of global catastrophe.

How Markets Fail

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Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141939427
Total Pages : 485 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (419 download)

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Book Synopsis How Markets Fail by : Cassidy John

Download or read book How Markets Fail written by Cassidy John and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did we get to where we are? John Cassidy shows that the roots of our most recent financial failure lie not with individuals, but with an idea - the idea that markets are inherently rational. He gives us the big picture behind the financial headlines, tracing the rise and fall of free market ideology from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan. Full of wit, sense and, above all, a deeper understanding, How Markets Fail argues for the end of 'utopian' economics, and the beginning of a pragmatic, reality-based way of thinking. A very good history of economic thought Economist How Markets Fail offers a brilliant intellectual framework . . . fine work New York Times An essential, grittily intellectual, yet compelling guide to the financial debacle of 2009 Geordie Greig, Evening Standard A powerful argument . . . Cassidy makes a compelling case that a return to hands-off economics would be a disaster BusinessWeek This book is a well constructed, thoughtful and cogent account of how capitalism evolved to its current form Telegraph Books of the Year recommendation John Cassidy ... describe[s] that mix of insight and madness that brought the world's system to its knees FT, Book of the Year recommendation Anyone who enjoys a good read can safely embark on this tour with Cassidy as their guide . . . Like his colleague Malcolm Gladwell [at the New Yorker], Cassidy is able to lead us with beguiling lucidity through unfamiliar territory New Statesman John Cassidy has covered economics and finance at The New Yorker magazine since 1995, writing on topics ranging from Alan Greenspan to the Iraqi oil industry and English journalism. He is also now a Contributing Editor at Portfolio where he writes the monthly Economics column. Two of his articles have been nominated for National Magazine Awards: an essay on Karl Marx, which appeared in October, 1997, and an account of the death of the British weapons scientist David Kelly, which was published in December, 2003. He has previously written for Sunday Times in as well as the New York Post, where he edited the Business section and then served as the deputy editor. In 2002, Cassidy published his first book, Dot.Con. He lives in New York.

Money and Tough Love

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780956569271
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (692 download)

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Book Synopsis Money and Tough Love by : Liaquat Ahamed

Download or read book Money and Tough Love written by Liaquat Ahamed and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the world's bankers, it is not April that is the cruellest month, but September. It is when most financial crises hit and the world's stock markets have their biggest tumbles. During the 19th and 20th century it was thought that the pattern was caused by the crop seasons. But even as agriculture has declined dramatically in significance, the seasonal spike continues. Perhaps it has to do with the end of the vacation season: all those well-heeled bankers, returning to work after the long hazy days of summer, are jolted back into reality.

The Match King

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Publisher : PublicAffairs
ISBN 13 : 0786741546
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (867 download)

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Book Synopsis The Match King by : Frank Partnoy

Download or read book The Match King written by Frank Partnoy and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2010-03-09 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the height of the roaring '20s, Swedish 'migr' Ivar Kreuger made a fortune raising money in America and loaning it to Europe in exchange for matchstick monopolies. His enterprise was a rare success story throughout the Great Depression. Yet after Kreuger's suicide in 1932, the true nature of his empire emerged. Driven by success to adopt ever-more perilous practices, Kreuger had turned to shell companies in tax havens, fudged accounting figures, off-balance-sheet accounting, even forgery. He created a raft of innovative financial products -- many of them precursors to instruments wreaking havoc in today's markets. When his Wall Street empire collapsed, millions went bankrupt. Frank Partnoy, a frequent commentator on financial disaster for the Financial Times, New York Times, NPR, and CBS's "60 Minutes," recasts the life story of a remarkable yet forgotten genius in ways that force us to re-think our ideas about the wisdom of crowds, the invisible hand, and the free and unfettered market.

The Devil's Derivatives

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Publisher : Harvard Business Press
ISBN 13 : 1422143163
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (221 download)

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Book Synopsis The Devil's Derivatives by : Nicholas Dunbar

Download or read book The Devil's Derivatives written by Nicholas Dunbar and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2011-07-12 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling narrative on what went wrong with our financial system—and who’s to blame. From an award-winning journalist who has been covering the industry for more than a decade, The Devil’s Derivatives charts the untold story of modern financial innovation—how investment banks invented new financial products, how investors across the world were wooed into buying them, how regulators were seduced by the political rewards of easy credit, and how speculators made a killing from the near-meltdown of the financial system. Author Nicholas Dunbar demystifies the revolution that briefly gave finance the same intellectual respectability as theoretical physics. He explains how bankers worldwide created a secret trillion-dollar machine that delivered cheap mortgages to the masses and riches beyond dreams to the financial innovators. Fundamental to this saga is how “the people who hated to lose” were persuaded to accept risk by “the people who loved to win.” Why did people come to trust and respect arcane financial tools? Who were the bankers competing to assemble the basic components into increasingly intricate machines? How did this process achieve its own unstoppable momentum—ending in collapse, bailouts, and a public outcry against the giants of finance? Provocative and intriguing, The Devil’s Derivatives sheds much-needed light on the forces that fueled the most brutal economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Central Banking 101

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Author :
Publisher : Joseph Wang
ISBN 13 : 0999136755
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (991 download)

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Book Synopsis Central Banking 101 by : Joseph Wang

Download or read book Central Banking 101 written by Joseph Wang and published by Joseph Wang. This book was released on 2020-01-18 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central banking is magic. With a few words, the Fed can lift the stock market out of desperation and catapult it towards euphoric highs. With a few keystrokes, the Fed can conjure up trillions of dollars and fund virtually unlimited Federal spending. And with a few poor decisions, the Fed can plunge the entire world into a recession. The Federal Reserve is one of the most powerful institutions in the world, and also one of the most difficult to understand. The Fed acts through its Open Markets Desk, which sits at the heart of the global financial system as the world’s ultimate and limitless provider of dollars. On behalf of policy makers, the Desk gathers market intelligence from all the major market participants, sifts through reams of internal data, and works behind the scenes keep the financial system intact. It is responsible for all of the Fed's market operations, from trillions in quantitative easing to hundreds of billions in repo and FX-swap loans. The financial crises of 2008 and 2020 abated only through the emergency interventions of the Desk. Joseph Wang spent five years studying the monetary system as a trader on the Desk. From that vantage point, Joseph saw firsthand how the Fed operates and how the financial system really works. This book is a distillation of his experience that aims to educate and demystify. After reading this book, you will understand how money is created, how the global dollar system is structured, and how it all fits into the broader financial system. The views in this book do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System.

The Ascent of Money

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1440654026
Total Pages : 498 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (46 download)

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Book Synopsis The Ascent of Money by : Niall Ferguson

Download or read book The Ascent of Money written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-11-13 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 10th anniversary edition, with new chapters on the crash, Chimerica, and cryptocurrency "[An] excellent, just in time guide to the history of finance and financial crisis." —The Washington Post "Fascinating." —Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek In this updated edition, Niall Ferguson brings his classic financial history of the world up to the present day, tackling the populist backlash that followed the 2008 crisis, the descent of "Chimerica" into a trade war, and the advent of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, with his signature clarity and expert lens. The Ascent of Money reveals finance as the backbone of history, casting a new light on familiar events: the Renaissance enabled by Italian foreign exchange dealers, the French Revolution traced back to a stock market bubble, the 2008 crisis traced from America's bankruptcy capital, Memphis, to China's boomtown, Chongqing. We may resent the plutocrats of Wall Street but, as Ferguson argues, the evolution of finance has rivaled the importance of any technological innovation in the rise of civilization. Indeed, to study the ascent and descent of money is to study the rise and fall of Western power itself.

All the Devils Are Here

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101551054
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (15 download)

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Book Synopsis All the Devils Are Here by : Bethany McLean

Download or read book All the Devils Are Here written by Bethany McLean and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-08-30 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here." -Shakespeare, The Tempest As soon as the financial crisis erupted, the finger-pointing began. Should the blame fall on Wall Street, Main Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue? On greedy traders, misguided regulators, sleazy subprime companies, cowardly legislators, or clueless home buyers? According to Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, two of America's most acclaimed business journalists, the real answer is all of the above-and more. Many devils helped bring hell to the economy. And the full story, in all of its complexity and detail, is like the legend of the blind men and the elephant. Almost everyone has missed the big picture. Almost no one has put all the pieces together. All the Devils Are Here goes back several decades to weave the hidden history of the financial crisis in a way no previous book has done. It explores the motivations of everyone from famous CEOs, cabinet secretaries, and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers, analysts, and Wall Street traders. It delves into the powerful American mythology of homeownership. And it proves that the crisis ultimately wasn't about finance at all; it was about human nature. Among the devils you'll meet in vivid detail: • Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide, who dreamed of spreading homeownership to the masses, only to succumb to the peer pressure-and the outsized profits-of the sleaziest subprime lending. • Roland Arnall, a respected philanthropist and diplomat, who made his fortune building Ameriquest, a subprime lending empire that relied on blatantly deceptive lending practices. • Hank Greenberg, who built AIG into a Rube Goldberg contraption with an undeserved triple-A rating, and who ran it so tightly that he was the only one who knew where all the bodies were buried. • Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, aloof and suspicious, who suffered from "Goldman envy" and drove a proud old firm into the ground by promoting cronies and pushing out his smartest lieutenants. • Lloyd Blankfein, who helped turn Goldman Sachs from a culture that famously put clients first to one that made clients secondary to its own bottom line. • Franklin Raines of Fannie Mae, who (like his predecessors) bullied regulators into submission and let his firm drift away from its original, noble mission. • Brian Clarkson of Moody's, who aggressively pushed to increase his rating agency's market share and stock price, at the cost of its integrity. • Alan Greenspan, the legendary maestro of the Federal Reserve, who ignored the evidence of a growing housing bubble and turned a blind eye to the lending practices that ultimately brought down Wall Street-and inflicted enormous pain on the country. Just as McLean's The Smartest Guys in the Room was hailed as the best Enron book on a crowded shelf, so will All the Devils Are Here be remembered for finally making sense of the meltdown and its consequences.

Finance and the Good Society

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 140084617X
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Finance and the Good Society by : Robert J. Shiller

Download or read book Finance and the Good Society written by Robert J. Shiller and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-21 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobel Prize-winning economist explains why we need to reclaim finance for the common good The reputation of the financial industry could hardly be worse than it is today in the painful aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. New York Times best-selling economist Robert Shiller is no apologist for the sins of finance—he is probably the only person to have predicted both the stock market bubble of 2000 and the real estate bubble that led up to the subprime mortgage meltdown. But in this important and timely book, Shiller argues that, rather than condemning finance, we need to reclaim it for the common good. He makes a powerful case for recognizing that finance, far from being a parasite on society, is one of the most powerful tools we have for solving our common problems and increasing the general well-being. We need more financial innovation—not less—and finance should play a larger role in helping society achieve its goals. Challenging the public and its leaders to rethink finance and its role in society, Shiller argues that finance should be defined not merely as the manipulation of money or the management of risk but as the stewardship of society's assets. He explains how people in financial careers—from CEO, investment manager, and banker to insurer, lawyer, and regulator—can and do manage, protect, and increase these assets. He describes how finance has historically contributed to the good of society through inventions such as insurance, mortgages, savings accounts, and pensions, and argues that we need to envision new ways to rechannel financial creativity to benefit society as a whole. Ultimately, Shiller shows how society can once again harness the power of finance for the greater good.