In Fed We Trust
Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic
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Narrated by:
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Dan Woren
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By:
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David Wessel
About this listen
“Whatever it takes”
That was Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s vow as the worst financial panic in more than fifty years gripped the world and he struggled to avoid the once unthinkable: a repeat of the Great Depression. Brilliant but temperamentally cautious, Bernanke researched and wrote about the causes of the Depression during his career as an academic. Then when thrust into a role as one of the most important people in the world, he was compelled to boldness by circumstances he never anticipated.
The president of the United States can respond instantly to a missile attack with America’s military might, but he cannot respond to a financial crisis with real money unless Congress acts. The Fed chairman can. Bernanke did. Under his leadership the Fed spearheaded the biggest government intervention in more than half a century and effectively became the fourth branch of government, with no direct accountability to the nation’s voters.
Believing that the economic catastrophe of the 1930s was largely the fault of a sluggish and wrongheaded Federal Reserve, Bernanke was determined not to repeat that epic mistake. In this penetrating look inside the most powerful economic institution in the world, David Wessel illuminates its opaque and undemocratic inner workings, while revealing how the Bernanke Fed led the desperate effort to prevent the world’s financial engine from grinding to a halt.In piecing together the fullest, most authoritative, and alarming picture yet of this decisive moment in our nation’s history, In Fed We Trust answers the most critical questions. Among them:
- What did Bernanke and his team at the Fed know–and what took them by surprise? Which of their actions stretched–or even ripped through–the Fed’s legal authority? Which chilling numbers and indicators made them feel they had no choice?
- What were they thinking at pivotal moments during the race to sell Bear Stearns, the unsuccessful quest to save Lehman Brothers, and the virtual nationalization of AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac? What were they saying to one another when, as Bernanke put it to Wessel: “We came very close to Depression 2.0”?
- How well did Bernanke, former treasury secretary Hank Paulson, and then New York Fed president Tim Geithner perform under intense pressure?
- How did the crisis prompt a reappraisal of the once-impregnable reputation of Alan Greenspan?
In Fed We Trust is a breathtaking and singularly perceptive look at a historic episode in American and global economic history.
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Irresponsible, corrupt, and confused book
- By Thomas on 12-22-14
By: Alan S. Blinder
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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 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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Bought and Paid For
- The Unholy Alliance Between Barack Obama and Wall Street
- By: Charles Gasparino
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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According to business reporter Charles Gasparino, President Obama is faking his outrage at Wall Street, and his calls for new policies to rein in banks that are "too big to fail" are just pabulum. In reality, Obama has climbed into bed with Wall Street CEOs, giving them what they want so they will support his liberal, big-government agenda.
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Revealing and Convincing
- By Walter on 10-24-11
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All the Presidents' Bankers
- The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power
- By: Nomi Prins
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 19 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Nomi Prins ushers us into the intimate world of exclusive clubs, vacation spots, and Ivy League universities that binds presidents and financiers. She unravels the multi-generational blood, intermarriage, and protégé relationships that have confined national influence to a privileged cluster of people. This unprecedented history of American power illuminates how financiers have retained their authoritative position through history, swaying presidents regardless of party affiliation.
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You better like history about the elite and rich
- By Victor on 01-12-15
By: Nomi Prins
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The Bank That Lived a Little
- Barclays in the Age of the Very Free Market
- By: Philip Augar
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Global superstar bankers under light-touch gov
- By Philo on 12-21-18
By: Philip Augar
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Overhaul
- An Insider's Account of the Obama Administration's Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry
- By: Steven Rattner
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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This first real look inside Team Obama mixes political warfare and big-business shakeups in equal proportions, and comes from a uniquely informed source. Steve Rattner is not just the man brought in by the president to save the auto industry, he is a former New York Times financial reporter who also earned a place among the top tier of Wall Street's most informed investment bankers and corporate experts.
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Overhaul - A Memoir
- By Roy on 12-05-10
By: Steven Rattner
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When Genius Failed
- The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
- By: Roger Lowenstein
- Narrated by: Roger Lowenstein
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Abridged
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Roger Lowenstein, the bestselling author of Buffett, captures Long-Term's roller-coaster ride in gripping detail. Drawing on confidential internal memos and interviews with dozens of key players, Lowenstein crafts a story that reads like a first-rate thriller from beginning to end. He explains not just how the fund made and lost its money, but what it was about the personalities of Long-Term's partners, the arrogance of their mathematical certainties, and the late-nineties culture of Wall Street that made it all possible.
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When Genius Failed
- By Sean on 12-17-08
By: Roger Lowenstein
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Fool's Gold
- By: Gillian Tett
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Gillian Tett brings to life in gripping detail how the Morgan team's bold ideas for a whole new kind of financial alchemy helped to ignite a revolution in banking, and how that revolution escalated wildly out of control. The deeply reported and lively narrative takes readers behind the scenes, to the inner sanctums of elite finance and to the secretive reaches of what came to be known as the "shadow banking" world.
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Outstanding narrative about the financial crisis
- By D. Littman on 07-17-09
By: Gillian Tett
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More Money Than God
- Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite
- By: Sebastian Mallaby
- Narrated by: Alan Nebelthau
- Length: 16 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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The Paul Volker Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington Post journalist Sebastian Mallaby has garnered New York Times Editor’s Choice and Notable Book honors for his enthralling nonfiction. Bolstered by Mallaby’s unprecedented access to the industry, More Money Than God tells the inside story of hedge funds, from their origins in the 1960s and 1970s to their role in the financial crisis of 2007–2009.
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Valiant effort but lacking analytic horsepower...
- By ND on 01-10-11
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Shaky Ground
- The Strange Saga of the US Mortgage Giants
- By: Bethany McLean
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 3 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2008 the US Treasury put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into a life-support state known as "conservatorship" to prevent their failure - and worldwide economic chaos. The two companies, which were always controversial, have become a battleground. Today, Fannie and Freddie are profitable again but still in conservatorship. Their profits are being redirected toward reducing the federal deficit, which leaves them with no buffer should they suffer losses again.
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Details on the Culture and History of the GSEs
- By Jose on 10-15-15
By: Bethany McLean
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Reckless Endangerment
- 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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Why Wall Street Matters
- By: William D. Cohan
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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William D. Cohan is no knee-jerk advocate for Wall Street and the big banks. He's one of America's most respected financial journalists and the progressive best-selling author of House of Cards. He has long been critical of the bad behavior that plagued much of Wall Street in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, and because he spent 17 years as an investment banker on Wall Street, he is an expert on its inner workings as well.
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An Inch Deep and A Mile Wide
- By Doug Sheridan on 04-26-17
By: William D. Cohan
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What listeners say about In Fed We Trust
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Wayne
- 09-15-09
Stops boldly at the surface
This book is rich in the history of events and background characters. Glad I read it but was left feeling that there should have been more depth and analysis into the meaning of it all and the implications for our economy. Certainly mentioned possible conflict in interests for some of the players but didn't deal with the implications of those conflicts. Didn't do much to explore the legitimacy of Shiela Bair's desire to preserve the integrity of the FDIC and seemed to give a heroic quality to the "whatever it takes" approach to rewriting the rule book on the fly. So what if the next Fed chairman is less agile or innovative? What about a government of laws?
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Patricia
- 08-27-09
Facinating and Informative
Dan Worens narration was fabulous. His voice is very pleasing to the ear. He changes tone when quoting making him him a pleasure to listen to. Thank you Audible.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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- Daniel
- 02-04-12
Ben saves the world
What did you love best about In Fed We Trust?
Good description of how the different Fed actors work together.
Which character – as performed by Dan Woren – was your favorite?
The book was narrative, so no characters are performed.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
The book really gives you a sense of how much the financial system froze up during 2008 and 2009 and how much the Fed and other agencies had to do to save Wall street from itself.
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Overall
- Daniel
- 09-07-10
Wow
This book had tons of facts and anecdotes I knew nothing about, such as the time the fed chairman slept on his couch.
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Overall
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Performance
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- ankur
- 09-03-12
adequate but not very informative
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
The author was trying to be unbiased but did not do very well. It did provide great background and insight to the activities surrounding the crisis, and in that regard was very worth listening to. However, It fell short on analysis of the specific plans the FED enacted and their conseqeunces.
Would you be willing to try another book from David Wessel? Why or why not?
No. Looking for a more impartial voice.
What three words best describe Dan Woren’s voice?
Smooth, understandable.
If this book were a movie would you go see it?
No
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Overall
- Daniel
- 10-17-09
A must-read for Fed watchers
It is a well-researched book giving the Fed's side of the story of how the present financial crisis developed and was managed. A must-read for those interested in politics and policy of money, inflation, financial markets and financial stability, to be read together with Charles Morris' 'The two trillion dollar meltdown' (which gives a market side of the things). Taking of the Fed perspective to describe the crisis is in itself unique and certainly worth a praise - it rightly focuses on the central bank as a the main nerve in crisis management, while demystifying its workings and providing a lot of colorful inside detail. Yet a few criticisms can be made. First, the book tries to be three things at once: a primer on the Fed's history and functions, a journalistic recounting of how the Fed behaved in the crisis since August 2007 and a biographical background to a few key players - Ben Bernanke and his closest lieutenants. The way those three streams are mixed sometimes seems a bit too arbitrary - I imagine heavily indexing the print copy of the book to be able to fully recover the three intertwined stories. Also: having an European background I noticed the author is rather loose on covering the interaction between the European Central Bank and the Fed in the crisis - which should in fact be a fourth major story line. Clearly, the author simply avoided a topic on which he felt less strong to write but the effect is of major underestimation of the co-operation effort that the present financial crisis enforced between central bankers and governments across the globe.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Emily
- 09-17-09
Great Book
Very Informative and not partisan. Dan Worens narration was fabulous. His voice is very pleasing to the ear. He changes tone when quoting making him him a pleasure to listen to. Thank you Audible.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Fabio Martinez Merino
- 04-14-18
quite interesting tale of turbulent time
Offers a very well told story almost novellike of difficult time when world economy was at the brim of disaster. lots of characters you can appreciate differences in behaviour when it comes to tackling a situation like this... very interesting
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Overall
- James
- 02-15-10
Do not outwardly display any panic
This audio book is well worth your time investment. As a reader I become drawn into all the action of the House, Senate, Whitehouse, Federal Finance, plus all other governmental folks that kept the economy moving during the many financial panics over several years; (so many monetary inter-dependencies). Takes a special economist to perform these economy saving jobs! No place for amateurs here... (Job seems to require keeping one's composure at all times, offer best money movement recommendations during times of financial panic).
Nothing short of wow after wow to keep the money moving; (whatever it takes). You may learn much about acting wise / (economy history educated) during times of high economic stress; as you listen to this audio book.
Thanks for reading!!
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- Eric
- 05-03-15
Great account of then financial crisis
This is a great overall read about what happened during the financial crisis and how the fed saved the country
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