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Bad Paper
- Chasing Debt from Wall Street to the Underworld
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
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Publisher's summary
Jake Halpern introduces us to a former banking executive and a former armed robber who become partners and go in quest of "paper" - the uncollected debts that are sold off by banks for pennies on the dollar. As Halpern shows, the world of consumer debt collection is a wild and unregulated shadow land, where operators may misrepresent a debtor's situation, make illegal threats, and even lay claim to debts that are not theirs to collect in the first place. Halpern follows his collectors as they intimidate competitors with weapons, manage high-pressure call centers, and scheme new ways to benefit from American's debt-industrial complex. He also explores the history of collection agencies and reveals the human cost of a system that leaves hardworking Americans with little opportunity to retire their debts in a reasonable way.
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As a cop, Ron Previte was corrupt. As a mobster, he was brutal. And in his final role, as a confidential informant to the FBI, Previte was deadly. The Last Gangster is his story—the story of the last days of the Philadelphia Mob, and of the clash of generations that brought it down once and for all. Convinced that the honor of the "business" was gone, he became the FBI's secret weapon in an intense and highly personalized war on the Philadelphia mob, operating with the same guile, wit, and stone-cold bravado that had made him a force in the underworld.
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Beautifully done! Exceptional.
- By none on 12-15-23
By: George Anastasia
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Chain of Title
- How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud
- By: David Dayen
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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In the depths of the Great Recession, a cancer nurse, a car dealership worker, and an insurance fraud specialist helped uncover the largest consumer crime in American history - a scandal that implicated dozens of major executives on Wall Street. They called it foreclosure fraud: Millions of families were kicked out of their homes based on false evidence by mortgage companies that had no legal right to foreclose.
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Capital Corruption and Greed
- By Anthony Freyberg on 07-30-16
By: David Dayen
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The Lost Bank
- The Story of Washington Mutual - The Biggest Bank Failure in American History
- By: Kirsten Grind
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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During the most dizzying days of the financial crisis, Washington Mutual, a bank with hundreds of billions of dollars in its coffers, suffered a crippling bank run. The story of its final, brutal collapse in the autumn of 2008, and its controversial sale to JPMorgan Chase, is an astonishing account of how one bank lost itself to greed and mismanagement, and how the entire financial industry - and even the entire country - lost its way as well. Kirsten Grind’s The Lost Bank is a magisterial and gripping account of these events.
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Sad and Angry by Turn
- By Johnnie Walker on 07-24-12
By: Kirsten Grind
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The Greatest Trade Ever
- The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History
- By: Gregory Zuckerman
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2006, hedge fund manager John Paulson realized something few others suspected - that the housing market and the value of subprime mortgages were grossly inflated and headed for a major fall. Paulson's background was in mergers and acquisitions, however, and he knew little about real estate or how to wager against housing. He had spent a career as an also-ran on Wall Street. But Paulson was convinced this was his chance to make his mark. He just wasn't sure how to do it. Colleagues at investment banks scoffed at him and investors dismissed him.
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Better Books Now Available
- By David on 05-02-11
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Allen Klein
- The Man Who Bailed Out the Beatles, Made the Stones, and Transformed Rock & Roll
- By: Fred Goodman
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Allen Klein was like no one the music industry had seen before. The hard-nosed business manager became infamous for allegedly catalyzing the Beatles' breakup and robbing the Rolling Stones, but the truth is both more complex and more fascinating.
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The Beatles' & Rolling Stones' Big Bad Manager
- By tru britty on 07-05-15
By: Fred Goodman
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The Unwinding
- An Inner History of the New America
- By: George Packer
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Unwinding, George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, tells the story of the United States over the past three decades in an utterly original way, with his characteristically sharp eye for detail and gift for weaving together complex narratives. The Unwinding portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation.
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Can't understand the low ratings!
- By Janet Pittman Henley on 05-27-13
By: George Packer
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Good for the Money
- My Fight to Pay Back America
- By: Bob Benmosche
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2009, at the peak of the financial crisis, AIG - the American insurance behemoth - was sinking fast. It was the peg upon which the nation hung its ire and resentment during the financial crisis: the pinnacle of Wall Street arrogance and greed. When Bob Benmosche climbed aboard as CEO, it was widely assumed that he would go down with his ship. In mere months, he turned things around, pulling AIG from the brink of financial collapse and restoring its profitability.
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Worthwhile, informative, and just short of inspiring
- By Preston on 11-17-21
By: Bob Benmosche
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Barbarians at the Gate
- The Fall of RJR Nabisco
- By: Bryan Burrough, John Helyar
- Narrated by: Bryan Burrough, John Helyar
- Length: 3 hrs and 2 mins
- Abridged
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Barbarians at the Gate has been called one of the most influential business books of all time, the definitive account of the largest takeover in Wall Street history. Bryan Burrough's and John Helyer's account of the frenzy that overtook Wall Street in October and November of 1988 gives us not only a detailed look at financial operations at the highest levels but a richly textured social history of wealth in the twilight of the Reagan era.
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Abridged and Poorly Read
- By Jake on 01-24-13
By: Bryan Burrough, and others
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Too Good to Be True
- The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff
- By: Erin Arvedlund
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Erin Arvedlund, the financial reporter who questioned the amazing returns of Bernie Madoff's hedge funds way back in 2001, traces the life of the infamous swindler and addresses the tough questions surrounding the collapse of his Ponzi scheme.
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Doesn't add much more that a lot of details.
- By Robert on 11-07-10
By: Erin Arvedlund
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War Dogs
- How Three Stoners From Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History
- By: Guy Lawson
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In January 2007 two young stoners from Miami Beach - one a ninth-grade dropout, the other a licensed masseur - won a $300 million Department of Defense contract to supply ammunition to the Afghanistan military. Incredibly, instead of fulfilling the order with high-quality arms, Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz - the dudes - bought cheap Communist-style surplus ammunition from Balkan gunrunners.
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What is with those accents?
- By Reader808 on 08-22-16
By: Guy Lawson
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Red Notice
- A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man's Fight for Justice
- By: Bill Browder
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Red Notice is a searing expose of the wholesale whitewash by Russian authorities of Magnitsky's imprisonment and murder, slicing deep into the shadowy heart of the Kremlin to uncover its sordid truths.
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This is an absolute "YES" as your next read/listen
- By William on 02-07-15
By: Bill Browder
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Conspiracy of Fools
- A True Story
- By: Kurt Eichenwald
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 30 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Say the name 'Enron' and most people believe they've heard all about the story that imperiled a presidency, destroyed a marketplace, and changed Washington and Wall Street forever. But in the hands of Kurt Eichenwald, the players we think we know and the business practices we think have been exposed are transformed into entirely new, and entirely gripping, material.
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Great Story
- By Adam M Pokorski on 06-06-06
By: Kurt Eichenwald
What listeners say about Bad Paper
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Mira Krishnan
- 09-20-19
Revealing but fragmented
By way of disclosure, my fiancé works in up-level aspects of this industry (currently at a large bank). He did not listen to this full book - he did take issues with some of it, and there is a lot of qualitative and anecdotal information. it can be a little overly salacious as it follows some of the characters in the story. In the book's defense (and against my fiancé), for better and worse, this book is probably 90% about what happens to resold debt, and what happens to consumer paper after it has been, frequently, re-parceled several times and changed multiple hands. It looks relatively little (but does briefly look) at the upstream issues of how and when debt is issued. It is an interesting look and it analyzes a segment of this industry that is not systematically scrutinized, but it needs to he considered alongside more staid analyses of American consumer debt. The narration is very good.
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- Nathaniel A. Gray
- 09-25-19
Incredible
The world of debt collection is so much more nuanced than I could have ever imagined. Just wow.
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- Paul
- 12-16-14
Gripping Story
Any additional comments?
The gritty, often shady, business of buying, selling, and collecting debt is told in this closeup view of some people in the industry. Strongly recommended!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Darwin8u
- 08-22-16
An Examination of Bad Debts; its Buyers & Sellers
“I’d be a bum on the street with a tin cup if the markets were efficient.”
― Jake Halpern, Bad Paper: Chasing Debt from Wall Street to the Underworld
New New Journalism about the financial/debt markets is "So HOT right now".
I went into this book thinking it was going to be a bad copy of a Michael Lewis book. Anyway, a friend of mine recommended this highly. She also has a great book out about debt and the poor (How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy), so I overcame my reluctance and read 'Bad Paper'. IT stunned me. A lot of the basics I understood before, but Halpern was able to add detail and texture to the industry and the players. It reads like Dante's Inferno. First Circle (Banks?), Second Circle (Hedge Funds/Debt Buyers?), Third Circle (Fresh Debt Brokers?), Fourth Circle (Large, more reputable Debt Collectors?), Fifth Circle (Mom & Pop Debt Collectors?), 6th Circle (Older/Crap/Bad Paper Brokers?), 7th Circle (White Dope Peddlers?), 8th Circle (Thieves?), Lawyers (9th Circle). I guess it holds up.
Anyway, the book was tighter than I imagined it was going to be. It was measured, well-documented, and its methodology was documented and obvious. Jake Halpern wasn't venturing too far out with his recommendation or his observations. He played a very close narrative game, and it worked well of this book. Sometimes, you don't have to cook the story too much, the story is already there -- waiting to be eaten. Jake Halern did a good balance of being in the story and getting the hell out of the way.
So, next on my list (after I recover from the emotional toil of this book) is Mehrsa Baradaran's book (How the Other Half Banks) and Jayne Meyer's Dark Money.
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- KEVIN N.
- 12-04-20
Racist much?
Absolutely disgusting with the blatant overuse of racist epithets towards people of color!Could have been much better without theN word every 5 minutes.
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