
Permanent Distortion
How the Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever
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Narrated by:
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Ellen Archer
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By:
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Nomi Prins
About this listen
A riveting exposé of a permanent financial dystopia, its causes, and real-world consequences
It is abundantly clear that our world is divided into two very different economies. The real one, for the average worker, is based on productivity and results. It behaves according to traditional rules of money and economics. The other doesn’t. It is the product of years of loose money, poured by central banks into a system dominated by financial titans. It is powerful enough to send stock markets higher even in the face of a global pandemic and threats of nuclear war.
This parting from reality has its roots in an emergency response to the financial crisis of 2008. “Quantitative Easing” injected a vast amount of cash into the economy—especially if you were a major Wall Street bank. What began as a short-term dependency became a habit, then a compulsion, and finally an addiction.
Nomi Prins relentlessly exposes a world fractured by policies crafted by the largest financial institutions, led by the Federal Reserve, that have supercharged the financial system while selling out regular citizens and leading to social and political reckonings. She uncovers a newly polarized world of the mega rich versus the never rich, the winners and losers of an unprecedented distortion that can never return to “normal.”
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2022 Nomi Prins (P)2022 PublicAffairsListeners also enjoyed...
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Accountable
- The Rise of Citizen Capitalism
- By: Michael O'Leary, Warren Valdmanis
- Narrated by: Joe Knezevich
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Corporations are broken, reflecting no purpose deeper than profit. But the tools we are relying on to fix them - corporate social responsibility, divestment, impact investing, and government control - risk making our problems worse. With lively storytelling and careful analysis, O’Leary and Valdmanis cut through the tired dogma of current economic thinking to reveal a hopeful truth: If we can make our corporations accountable to a deeper purpose, we can make capitalism both prosperous and good.
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mandatory reading
- By joseph on 02-01-21
By: Michael O'Leary, and others
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The Pity of War
- Explaining World War I
- By: Niall Ferguson
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 21 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The Pity of War makes a simple and provocative argument: the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England's fault. According to Niall Ferguson, England entered into war based on naive assumptions of German aims, thereby transforming a Continental conflict into a world war, which it then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather was the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces.
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Ferguson wouldn’t know history if it hit him in the head
- By Schen on 10-07-20
By: Niall Ferguson
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The Wrong Stuff
- How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned
- By: John Strausbaugh
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of World War II, with America ascendant and the Soviet Union devastated by the conflict, the Space Race should have been over before it started. But the underdog Soviets scored a series of victories—starting with the 1957 launch of Sputnik and continuing in the years following--that seemed to achieve the impossible. It was proof, it seemed, that the USSR had manpower and collective will that went beyond America's material advantages. They had asserted themselves as a world power. But in The Wrong Stuff, John Strausbaugh tells a different story.
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Perfection
- By Wilhelm on 05-08-25
By: John Strausbaugh
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A Human History of Emotion
- How the Way We Feel Built the World We Know
- By: Richard Firth-Godbehere
- Narrated by: Richard Firth-Godbehere
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In A Human History of Emotion, Richard Firth-Godbehere takes listeners on a fascinating and wide ranging tour of the central and often under-appreciated role emotions have played in human societies around the world and throughout history — from Ancient Greece to Gambia, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, the United States, and beyond.
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another woke intellectually conformist who can't stop talking about climate change
- By Anonymous User on 01-19-25
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Knowing What We Know
- The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom?
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Colorful anecdotes but tiring after a while.
- By Thumb Guy on 05-03-23
By: Simon Winchester
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The Inside Game
- Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves
- By: Keith Law
- Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In this groundbreaking book, Keith Law, the ESPN baseball writer and author of the acclaimed Smart Baseball, offers an era-spanning dissection of some of the best and worst decisions in modern baseball, explaining what motivated them, what can be learned from them, and how their legacy has shaped the game....
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Narrator is negative value compared to replacement
- By Daniel W. Franzen on 11-28-20
By: Keith Law
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In Defense of Elitism
- Why I'm Better Than You and You're Better Than Someone Who Didn't Buy This Book
- By: Joel Stein
- Narrated by: Joel Stein
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The night Donald Trump won the presidency, our author Joel Stein, Thurber Prize finalist and former staff writer for Time Magazine, instantly knew why. The main reason wasn't economic anxiety or racism. It was that he was anti-elitist. Hillary Clinton represented Wall Street, academics, policy papers, Davos, international treaties and the people who think they're better than you. People like Joel Stein. Trump represented something far more appealing, which was beating up people like Joel Stein.
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Total waste of time. Returning.
- By Tom on 10-28-19
By: Joel Stein
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The Targeter
- My Life in the CIA, Hunting Terrorists and Challenging the White House
- By: Nada Bakos, Davin Coburn
- Narrated by: Christine Lakin
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1999, 30-year-old Nada Bakos moved from her lifelong home in Montana to Washington, DC, to join the CIA. Quickly realizing her affinity for intelligence work, Nada was determined to rise through the ranks of the agency first as an analyst and then as a Targeting Officer, eventually finding herself on the frontline of America's War against Islamic extremists. In this role, Nada was charged with determining if Iraq had a relationship with 9/11 and Al-Qaida, and finding the mastermind behind this terrorist activity: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
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Terrible book. Feminazi Propaganda
- By Dan Wells on 08-24-19
By: Nada Bakos, and others
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Gaslighting
- Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People -- and Break Free
- By: Stephanie Moulton Sarkis
- Narrated by: Suehyla El Attar, Stephanie Moulton Sarkis
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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A mental health expert sheds light on "gaslighting" - the manipulative technique used by sociopaths, narcissists, and others - offering practical strategies to cope and break free. Dr. Sarkis delves into the psychology behind the phenomenon, devoting chapters to specific scenarios, such as gaslighting in dating, in relationships, at work, and in families. With warning signs and examples of the destructive consequences along with practical tips and strategies, Gaslighting will help anyone trapped in a manipulative relationship to break free and heal from this toxic behavior.
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This book helped me through the toughest of times
- By Claudia on 12-10-18
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Zconomy
- How Gen Z Will Change the Future of Business—and What to Do About It
- By: Jason R. Dorsey, Denise Villa
- Narrated by: Jason R. Dorsey, Denise Villa
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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The most complete and authoritative guide to Gen Z, describing how leaders must adapt their employment, sales and marketing, product, and growth strategies to attract and keep this important new generation of customers, employees, and trendsetters. Gen Z changes everything. Today’s businesses are not built to sell and market the way Gen Z shops and buys, or to recruit and employ Gen Z the way they find and keep jobs. Leaders need answers now as gen Z is the fastest growing generation of employees and the most important group of consumer trendsetters.
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interesting entry into understanding GenZ
- By Amazon Customer on 12-27-21
By: Jason R. Dorsey, and others
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A Concise History of the Middle East, 13th Edition
- By: Arthur Goldschmidt, Ibrahim Al-Marashi
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 21 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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A Concise History of the Middle East provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of this region. Spanning from the pre-Islamic era to the present, it explores the evolution of Middle Eastern institutions and culture, the influence of European colonialism and Western imperialism, regional modernization efforts, the struggle of various peoples for political independence, the Arab–Israel conflict, the reassertion of Islamist values and power, the issues surrounding the Palestinian Question, and more.
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Narration is robotic
- By Rana R. on 01-04-25
By: Arthur Goldschmidt, and others
What listeners say about Permanent Distortion
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- Sarsaparilla
- 10-30-22
Excellent retrospective of recent events
Very well written and narrated. A trip down memory lane, recalling the cast of characters and strange developments that have taken place in recent decades. Full of pertinent information, seamlessly tied together from the perspective of an author who was paying much more attention than I ever was. As an independent voter, I found it to be fairly even-handed.
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2 people found this helpful
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- marwalk
- 12-11-22
The market has nothing to do with the real economy
From the documented accounts in this book, Nomi Prins demonstrates that the stock market has little relation to, and even less impact on, the real economy where most people live. Although left brain bean counters will be right at home with the almost overload of quantitative information, readers without a financial background will also be able to follow these events that follow the money. Prins recounts event after event in which the markets are saved and usually come out stronger from financial melt downs such as that in 2008—while the real economy as measured by quality employment and financial security for those not playing the markets continues to decline. From causations documented in this book, Prins makes it clear that the real economy will never recover under this system. Increasing numbers of people are waking up to that every day—and they are starting to do something about it, including the use by some of digital currencies such as Bitcoin.
As implied in the book's title, Prins asserts there is no going back. The author identifies five main emerging economic sectors that overlap in functionality, material, and skills needed to implement them: 1. New energy, 2. Infrastructure, 3. Transformative technology, 4. New money, and 5. Meta-reality (Metaverse and artificial intelligence). Prins also identifies the sectors that are attracting public/private infrastructure investment in the real economy, and those are: 1. Sustainable power, 2. Technological innovation, 3. Virtual collaboration portals, and 4. Revolutionizing of money itself.
Of the several points made in this book, a prominent take away is the complete separation of the markets from the real economy—that when there is news of the market doing well, one must remember that has nothing to do with the real economy. Let's lean into the future and insist that all financial activity be put to genuine productive use.
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- David L. Moore
- 01-19-23
Excellent
This is an excellent read. Nomi Prins precisely tells the facts of the last 13 years of monetary policy and its implications.
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- Artemisia
- 02-05-23
Good premise
The premise of this book is intriguing and probably accurate. The world of finance and particularly central banks are fueling asset markets and starving the real economy of capital. Unfortunately the latter 2/3rds of the book stray off into the weeds and on topics that seem both peripheral and not logically supported by the main premise.
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- SteveO
- 10-24-22
Great summation of current world
i have followed Nomi for a while but was surprised by her good analysis of the future of money. Having gone through my own transformation to understand the basis of money and "reality", I loved the final chapters of this book. i recommend it to all since we NEED this transformation!!
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- Duff Mayer
- 01-31-23
nothing special here. just a history review lesso
struggled to finish.
narrator monotone and 😴 boring
thought would be more interesting ....
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- Christopher Calhoun
- 12-31-22
Outstanding Book about the current Financial sys.
This book gives a very detailed explanation of our financial system and how the top 1% benefits while the masses suffer. A must read !
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- XXL
- 10-17-22
Lots of data, but not focused
The theme of the book is very clear, and the reading is great.
I suspect most readers would have already noticed that “stock market is no real economy”, just hope to be further enlightened on underling reasons and trending. But after completing the audio book I don’t feel I have learned much beyond the assertion, and been offered clear proposals on how to deal this undesirable distortion (“makes the rich richer and the poor poorer”) . Sure the author presented a lot of facts, including data, examples, before and after many historical events across the world, but linkages to the theme and key arguments seem weak, for e.g., why this distortion will be “permanent”.
Also I thought the book could be significantly shortened.
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- The Rimaya Group
- 10-12-22
Perfecto! Another classic from Queen Nomi
Simply explained and distilled; not easy at all. A great update on the true reality of current macro financial markets.
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- George
- 10-20-22
The truth is sad
Great book! Petulant Orange failed businessman, dress up dictator really turned America into a modern day slave state. This is criminality and the GOP salivated at the mouth to impoverished us all.
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