Meltdown Iceland
How the Global Financial Crisis Bankrupted an Entire Country
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Narrated by:
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Paul Dodenhoff
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By:
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Roger Boynes
About this listen
It is a truism that when America sneezes, Europe catches a cold. The subprime mortgage crisis, which began in America in 2007, unleashed a veritable epidemic of financial ill health all over the world. All European countries were affected, and the developing world also felt a chill.
However it was Iceland, a tiny volcanic outcrop in the North Atlantic whose population of 300,000 had the highest GDP and counted itself the happiest in the world, which caught the worst cold. It has nearly killed them. For a few short years, the Icelanders deluded themselves that they were rich. Dour Reykjavik became the Capital of Cool. Rock musicians like Damon Albarn bought houses and stakes in pubs. Clubs boomed, the alcohol was expensive and the Krona was strong.
All over the world people are trying to understand what caused the economic crisis and are asking themselves who is to blame. In Iceland that question is easily answered and the handful of bankers and politicians responsible have had to hire body guards, hole themselves up in their country houses, and stay off the streets for fear of attack.
Collaborating with the business editor of Iceland's leading daily newspaper, award-winning writer Roger Boyes tells the inside story of the bankrupting of Iceland and explains how it has ramifications for us all, from the private and public investors who trusted their money in Iceland's banks, to the workers in high street clothes stores whose owners no longer can pay for the shirts on their own backs.
Writing with panache and color, and drawing on interviews with everyone from artists and policitians to the local fisherman, Meltdown Iceland is an authoritative and compelling account of the financial destruction of this tiny, icy but vibrant country.
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-
Story
In megacities like Mumbai, where half the population live in slums, the extraordinary riches of India’s new dynasties echo the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers of yesterday. James Crabtree’s The Billionaire Raj takes listeners on a personal journey to meet these reclusive billionaires, fugitive tycoons, and shadowy political power brokers. Crabtree dramatizes the battle between crony capitalists and economic reformers, revealing a tense struggle between equality and privilege playing out against a combustible backdrop of aspiration, class, and caste.
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Engaging, authors politics could be reduced
- By Chris on 06-17-23
By: James Crabtree
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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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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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The House of Morgan
- An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
- By: Ron Chernow
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 34 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A gripping history of banking and the booms and busts that shaped the world on both sides of the Atlantic, The House of Morgan traces the trajectory of the J. P.Morgan empire from its obscure beginnings in Victorian London to the crash of 1987. Ron Chernow paints a fascinating portrait of the private saga of the Morgans and the rarefied world of the American and British elite in which they moved. Based on extensive interviews and access to the family and business archives, The House of Morgan is an investigative masterpiece.
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The construction of the House of Morgan
- By Darwin8u on 10-22-18
By: Ron Chernow
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Dealing with China
- An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower
- By: Henry M. Paulson
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 18 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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When Hu Jintao, China's then vice president, came to visit the New York Stock Exchange and Ground Zero in 2002, he asked Hank Paulson to be his guide. It was a testament to the pivotal role that Goldman Sachs played in helping China experiment with private enterprise. In Dealing with China, the best-selling author of On the Brink draws on his unprecedented access to both the political and business leaders of modern China to answer several key questions.
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A Valuable Book on China
- By Michael Moore on 09-04-15
By: Henry M. Paulson
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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 Money Culture
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Alexander Cendese
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The 1980s was the most outrageous and turbulent era in the financial market since the crash of ’29, not only on Wall Street but around the world. Michael Lewis, as a trainee at Salomon Brothers in New York and as an investment banker and later financial journalist, was uniquely positioned to chronicle the ambition and folly that fueled the decade. In these trenchant, often hilarious true tales we meet the colorful movers and shakers who commanded the headlines and rewrote the rules.
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Not the normal great Michael Lewis
- By Me on 05-12-12
By: Michael Lewis
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Plutocrats
- The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else
- By: Chrystia Freeland
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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There has always been some gap between rich and poor in this country, but in the last few decades what it means to be rich has changed dramatically. Alarmingly, the greatest income gap is not between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, but within the wealthiest 1 percent of our nation-as the merely wealthy are left behind by the rapidly expanding fortunes of the new global super-rich. Forget the 1 percent; Plutocrats proves that it is the wealthiest 0.1 percent who are outpacing the rest of us at break-neck speed.
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Good Storytelling but ... analysis is "eh'
- By Susan on 11-04-12
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Grand Pursuit
- The Story of Economic Genius
- By: Sylvia Nasar
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd, Anne Twomey
- Length: 20 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In a sweeping narrative, the author of the mega-bestseller A Beautiful Mind takes us on a journey through modern history with the men and women who changed the lives of every single person on the planet. It’s the epic story of the making of modern economics, and of how it rescued mankind from squalor and deprivation by placing its material fate in its own hands rather than in Fate. Nasar’s account begins with Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew observing and publishing the condition of the poor majority in mid nineteenth-century London, the richest and most glittering place in the world.
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A Beautiful Grand Pursuit
- By Joshua Kim on 05-06-12
By: Sylvia Nasar
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Confidence Men
- Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
- By: Ron Suskind
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 22 hrs
- Unabridged
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The hidden history of Wall Street and the White House comes down to a single American concept: confidence. Both centers of power, New York and Washington, learned how to manufacture it - until August 2007, when that confidence began to crumble. Ron Suskind here tells the story of what happened next, as Wall Street struggled to save itself while a man with little experience and soaring rhetoric emerged from obscurity to usher in "a new era of responsibility".
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Insightful, but...
- By Ray on 10-29-11
By: Ron Suskind
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The Miracle
- The Epic Story of Asia's Quest for Wealth
- By: Michael Schuman
- Narrated by: Fred Stella
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Spanning nine countries, filled with heroic tales of bold decisions and self-sacrifice, and probing vast historical undercurrents, "The Miracle" takes readers inside private boardroom meetings, heated business negotiations, factory floors, and presidential cabinet sessions for a behind-the-scenes look at the events that shaped Asia's economic ascent - and will shape the world in the century to come.
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Packed with stories of both bussinesses and gov
- By Roman on 11-21-12
By: Michael Schuman
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Yellen
- The Trailblazing Economist Who Navigated an Era of Upheaval
- By: Jon Hilsenrath
- Narrated by: Jon Hilsenrath, Seth Podowitz
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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An engrossing and deeply human chronicle of the past fifty years of American economic and social upheaval, viewed through the consequential life of the most powerful woman in American economic history, Janet Yellen, and her unconventional partnership in marriage and work with Nobel Laureate George Akerlof.
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Must read
- By Ali on 03-26-24
By: Jon Hilsenrath
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Bending Adversity
- Japan and the Art of Survival
- By: David Pilling
- Narrated by: Tim Andes Pabon
- Length: 14 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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In Bending Adversity, Financial Times Asia editor David Pilling presents a fresh vision of Japan, drawing on his own deep experience, as well as observations from a cross section of Japanese citizenry, including novelist Haruki Murakami, former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, industrialists and bankers, activists and artists, teenagers and octogenarians. Through their voices, Pilling captures the dynamism and diversity of contemporary Japan.
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Good book, but terribly read
- By Kallan Resnick on 10-24-14
By: David Pilling
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The Forgotten Man
- By: Amity Shlaes
- Narrated by: Terence Aselford
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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It's difficult today to imagine how America survived the Great Depression. Only through the stories of the common people who struggled during that era can we really understand how the nation endured. In The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes offers a striking reinterpretation of the Great Depression. Rejecting the old emphasis on the New Deal, she turns to the neglected and moving stories of individual Americans, and shows how they helped establish the steadfast character we developed as a nation.
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a story of forgotten times
- By Debb Robinson on 10-11-07
By: Amity Shlaes
What listeners say about Meltdown Iceland
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Benjamin
- 08-04-10
Good book, okay reading, but caution.
The book is solid, giving lots of background color to those hungry to learn about this particular crisis, and about its implications. Although these wouldn't distract most readers, the listener should be warned that the reader mispronounces Icelandic names, including, comically, pronouncing "Ísland", the name of the country "island", the English noun. He thankfully checked out people's proper names, but the reader should review company and town names before talking about the facts of the book with Icelanders they meet.
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6 people found this helpful