Broken Bargain
Bankers, Bailouts, and the Struggle to Tame Wall Street
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Narrated by:
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Bernadette Dunne
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By:
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Kathleen Day
About this listen
A history of major financial crises - and how taxpayers have been left with the bill.
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. Despite subsequent periodic changes in these regulations, the underlying bargain played a major role in preserving the stability of the financial markets as well as the larger economy. 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.
This engaging history documents the country's financial crises, focusing on those of the 1920s, the 1980s, and the 2000s, and reveals how the two more recent crises arose from the neglect of this fundamental bargain.
©2018 Kathleen Day (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon
- By: Gretchen Morgenson, Joshua Rosner
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson, the star business columnist of The New York Times, exposes how the watchdogs who were supposed to protect the country from financial harm were actually complicit in the actions that finally blew up the American economy.
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Required reading
- By David on 10-24-11
By: Gretchen Morgenson, and others
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Borrowed Time
- Two Centuries of Booms, Busts, and Bailouts at Citi
- By: James Freeman, Vern McKinley
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Biased
- By CF on 08-09-19
By: James Freeman, and others
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Wall Street
- A History, Updated Edition
- By: Charles R. Geisst
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 27 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Wall Street is an unending source of legend - and nightmares. It is a universal symbol of both the highest aspirations of economic prosperity and the basest impulses of greed and deception. Charles R. Geisst's Wall Street is at once a chronicle of the street itself - from the days when the wall was merely a defensive barricade built by Peter Stuyvesant - and an engaging economic history of the United States, a tale of profits and losses, enterprising spirits, and key figures that transformed America into the most powerful economy in the world.
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Many books in one; best linking of stories, eras
- By Philo on 03-23-14
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The Ascent of Money
- A Financial History of the World
- By: Niall Ferguson
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance. Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress.
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A mostly successful and interesting history
- By A reader on 02-24-09
By: Niall Ferguson
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The Great American Stick Up
- Greedy Bankers and the Politicians Who Love Them
- By: Robert Scheer
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Instead of going where other journalists have gone in search of this story - the board rooms and trading floors of the big Wall Street firms - Scheer goes back to Washington, D.C., a veritable crime scene, beginning in the 1980s, where the captains of the finance industry, their lobbyists and allies among leading politicians destroyed an American regulatory system that had been functioning effectively since the era of the New Deal.
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A great telling of an unfortunate part of history
- By Trace on 10-27-20
By: Robert Scheer
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Fault Lines
- How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World's Economy
- By: Raghuram Rajan
- Narrated by: Richard Davidson
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Raghuram Rajan was one of the few economists who warned of the global financial crisis before it hit. Now, as the world struggles to recover, it's tempting to blame what happened on just a few greedy bankers who took irrational risks and left the rest of us to foot the bill. In Fault Lines, Rajan argues that serious flaws in the economy are also to blame, and warns that a potentially more devastating crisis awaits us if they aren't fixed.
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A REAL SNOOZER
- By Frank on 12-02-10
By: Raghuram Rajan
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The Age of Oversupply
- Overcoming the Greatest Challenge to the Global Economy
- By: Daniel Alpert
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The governments and central banks of the developed world have tried every policy tool imaginable, yet our economies remain sluggish, or worse. How did we get here, and how can we emerge from the longest downturn in recent memory? Daniel Alpert, a progressive Wall Street banker and economist, argues that we are living in the age of oversupply.
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Great book but now out of date
- By emory morsberger on 11-30-17
By: Daniel Alpert
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Naked Money
- A Revealing Look at What It Is and Why It Matters
- By: Charles Wheelan
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Consider the $20 bill. It has no more value, as a simple slip of paper, than Monopoly money. Yet even children recognize that tearing one into small pieces is an act of inconceivable stupidity. What makes a $20 bill actually worth $20? In the third volume of his best-selling Naked series, Charles Wheelan uses this seemingly simple question to open the door to the surprisingly colorful world of money and banking.
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This is a beautiful audiobook, and well-narrated.
- By Thirsty Mind on 11-10-18
By: Charles Wheelan
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The Forgotten Depression
- 1921: The Crash That Cured Itself
- By: James Grant
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1920-1921, Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding met a deep economic slump by seeming to ignore it, implementing policies that most 21st-century economists would call backward. Confronted with plunging prices, wages, and employment, the government balanced the budget and, through the Federal Reserve, raised interest rates. No "stimulus" was administered, and a powerful, job-filled recovery was under way by late 1921. Yet by 1929, the economy spiraled downward as the Hoover administration adopted the policies that Wilson and Harding had declined to put in place.
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Best thinking-sharpener I know of
- By Philo on 03-11-20
By: James Grant
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A History of the United States in Five Crashes
- Stock Market Meltdowns That Defined a Nation
- By: Scott Nations
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In this absorbing, smart, and accessible blend of economic and cultural history in the vein of the works of Michael Lewis and Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial executive and CNBC contributor examines the five most significant stock market crashes in the United States over the past century, revealing how they have defined the nation today.
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A solid telling of crucial history
- By Philo on 06-17-17
By: Scott Nations
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The Death of Money
- The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System
- By: James Rickards
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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The international monetary system has collapsed three times in the past hundred years, in 1914, 1939, and 1971. Each collapse was followed by a period of tumult: War, civil unrest, or significant damage to the stability of the global economy. Now James Rickards, the acclaimed author of Currency Wars, shows why another collapse is rapidly approaching - and why this time, nothing less than the institution of money itself is at risk.
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A good review of the global financial system
- By Jean on 04-22-14
By: James Rickards
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The Fine Print
- How Big Companies Use 'Plain English' to Rob You Blind
- By: David Cay Johnston
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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David Cay Johnston has made a name for himself as the defender of the common man, calling out the rich and powerful for cheating the system at the expense of everyone else. Whether he's exposing unjust loopholes in the tax code that help the rich get richer or pointing out how powerful corporations pocket government subsidies at excessive taxpayer expense, Johnston is an eloquent town crier for justice and equality.
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A must listen if you love or hate Trump
- By Rob D on 04-19-17
What listeners say about Broken Bargain
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Philo
- 05-23-20
Clear walk-through of US financial history, except
Here is a masterful mix of ideas, people, and events. The authoring and editing are superior. This produces a stream of lucid explanations of deep and important things, that really stick and make useful sense. Each sentence is well-crafted. There is a thoughfulness that calmly exposes the trade-offs of each side and each thing, rare in today's (or any day's) writing. So, the reader comes out comprehending banking, money, and the big debates of each time frame (leading up to today) with a clarity not found elsewhere (and I read at least a dozen financial history books, in print or audio, each year). The narration is a perfect match. Whatever wisps of bias one might find here, are transparent (so, respectful of the listener's intelligence), and the author never sacrifices a disciplined laying out of the foundations one needs to think for oneself. This book accomplishes what dozens of others strive at, and one way or another, fall short on.
My reservations (and 4 stars) are about the imbalance in the 20th and 21st century history part. The hint is in the title: "... tghe Struggle to Tame Wall Street." There is more to life, I contend, than "taming," and any society too tame or regulated has its own downsides. Innovation in finance as elsewhere often came from drawing outside the lines, sometimes more subtly and cleverly, sometimes less. The surviving bits made life better for many people, including me. The author may be right in trying to nudge toward good regulation, and to express agony at its absence, but I think it is done here by neglecting to elicit the different sides of the matter. As a result it becomes a continuous, if articulate, tapering into 4 + hours of righteous scolding. It is nobly done in the tradition of Brandeis, Woodrow Wilson, FDR (though more bitterly than FDR), and Elizabeth Warren. But that is half the story. If you want a good compilation of how many banks and ultimately pretty ordinary bankers got to pretty twisted practices, and how that fits in the surrounding environment of rules (and their gaps), it is here, and clear. But I like the balance of, say, Mervyn King in The End of Alchemy, who sees the energizing, creative and life-imparting sides of finance as well as its hazards. Even Robert Shiller, a very moral economist, in Finance and the Good Society (a title here), makes this balanced distinction. There is a rich and not at all trivial debate about how much we need to slow down and dumb down everything (or any particular thing) to make it easily used for the least capable (or least motivated) of us. That goes far beyond finance but it is exemplified here. That debate is completely absent here: it is taken for granted the most inarticulate person deserves the (quite socially costly) blank check of everyone's endless and absolute indulgence. There is a simplistic story of bad wolves devouring the good sheep. It is not that simple, IMO. nevertheless, let me close admiring the work done here.
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