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The Long Shadow of Default
- Britain's Unpaid War Debts to the United States, 1917-2020
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
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Publisher's summary
The Long Shadow of Default focuses on an important but neglected example of sovereign default between two of the wealthiest and most powerful democracies in modern history. The United Kingdom accrued considerable financial debts to the United States during and immediately after the First World War. In 1934, the British government unilaterally suspended payment on these debts. This book examines why the United Kingdom was one of the last major powers to default on its war debts to the United States and how these outstanding obligations affected political and economic relations between both governments. The British government's unpaid debts cast a surprisingly long shadow over policymaking on both sides of the Atlantic. Memories of British default would limit transatlantic cooperation before and after the Second World War, inform Congressional debates about the economic difficulties of the 1970s, and generate legal challenges for both governments up until the 1990s. More than a century later, the United Kingdom's war debts to the United States remain unpaid and outstanding.
David James Gill provides one of the most detailed historical analyses of any sovereign default. He brings attention to an often-neglected episode in international history to inform, refine, and sometimes challenge the wider study of sovereign default.
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- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Shortly after arriving in the White House in early 1933, Franklin Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard. His opponents thought his decision unwise at best and ruinous at worst. But they could not have been more wrong. With The Money Makers, Eric Rauchway tells the absorbing story of how FDR and his advisors pulled the levers of monetary policy to save the domestic economy and propel the United States to unprecedented prosperity and superpower status.
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Excellent over view and easily understandable
- By L. Ford Ballard, Jr. on 01-15-19
By: Eric Rauchway
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1931
- Debt, Crisis, and the Rise of Hitler
- By: Tobias Straumann
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Germany's financial collapse in the summer of 1931 was one of the biggest economic catastrophes of modern history. It led to a global panic, brought down the international monetary system, and turned a worldwide recession into a prolonged depression. Hitler managed to profit from the crisis, because he had been the most vocal critic of the reparation regime. As the financial system collapsed, his relentless attacks against foreign creditors and the alleged complicity of the German government resonated more than ever with the electorate.
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Emergency executive powers gone wild
- By Philo on 06-06-19
By: Tobias Straumann
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The Price of Greatness
- By: Jay Cost
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the history of American politics, there are few stories as enigmatic as that of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison's bitterly personal falling out. Together they helped bring the Constitution into being, yet soon after the new republic was born, they broke over the meaning of its founding document. Hamilton emphasized economic growth; Madison the importance of republican principles. Author Jay Cost is the first to argue that both men were right - and that their quarrel reveals a fundamental paradox at the heart of the American experiment.
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Principles in Tension
- By William Ehrich on 06-13-18
By: Jay Cost
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The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve
- By: Peter Conti-Brown
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The independence of the Federal Reserve is considered a cornerstone of its identity, crucial for keeping monetary policy decisions free of electoral politics. But do we really understand what is meant by "Federal Reserve independence"? Using scores of examples from the Fed's rich history, The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve shows that much common wisdom about the nation's central bank is inaccurate.
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Meandering, gossipy, a bit pop-journalistic
- By Philo on 10-03-16
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A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II
- By: Murray N. Rothbard
- Narrated by: Matthew Mezinskis
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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In what is sure to become the standard account, Rothbard traces inflations, banking panics, and money meltdowns from the colonial period through the mid-20th century to show how government's systematic war on sound money is the hidden force behind nearly all major economic calamities in American history. Never has the story of money and banking been told with such rhetorical power and theoretical vigor. You will treasure this volume.
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Great facts (if selective); ideological rigidity
- By Philo on 02-04-16
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The Great Contraction, 1929-1933
- By: Milton Friedman
- Narrated by: A. C. Fellner
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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The Great Contraction, 1929-1933 argued that the Federal Reserve could have stemmed the severity of the Depression, but failed to exercise its role of managing the monetary system and ameliorating banking panics. This edition of the original text includes a new preface by Anna Jacobson Schwartz, as well as a new introduction by the economist Peter Bernstein.
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A different explanation for the Great Depression.
- By Robert on 11-13-12
By: Milton Friedman
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And the Weak Suffer What They Must?
- Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future
- By: Yanis Varoufakis
- Narrated by: Yanis Varoufakis, Leighton Pugh
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In January 2015, Yanis Varoufakis, an economics professor teaching in Austin, Texas, was elected to the Greek parliament with more votes than any other member of parliament. He was appointed finance minister, and, in the whirlwind five months that followed, everything he had warned about was confirmed as the "troika" (the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund, and European Commission) stonewalled his efforts to resolve Greece's economic crisis.
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interesting perspective
- By Jamila on 07-12-20
By: Yanis Varoufakis
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The Deluge
- The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931
- By: Adam Tooze
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 21 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the depths of the Great War, with millions dead and no imaginable end to the conflict, societies around the world began to buckle. The heart of the financial system shifted from London to New York. The infinite demands for men and materiel reached into countries far from the front. The strain of the war ravaged all economic and political assumptions, bringing unheard-of changes in the social and industrial order.
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Not For The Faint of Heart
- By David on 07-15-15
By: Adam Tooze
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Collusion
- How Central Bankers Rigged the World
- By: Nomi Prins
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this searing exposé, former Wall Street insider Nomi Prins shows how the 2007-2008 financial crisis turbo-boosted the influence of central bankers and triggered a massive shift in the world order. Packed with tantalizing details about the elite players orchestrating the world economy, Collusion takes the listener inside the most discreet conversations at exclusive retreats like Jackson Hole and Davos. A work of meticulous reporting and bracing analysis, Collusion will change the way we understand the new world of international finance.
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Fair history survey, lazy characterizations
- By Philo on 05-09-18
By: Nomi Prins
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The China Challenge
- Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power
- By: Thomas Christensen
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Many see China's rise as a threat to US leadership in Asia and beyond. Thomas J. Christensen argues instead that the real challenge lies in dissuading China from regional aggression while eliciting its global cooperation. Drawing on decades of scholarship and experience as a senior diplomat, Christensen offers a deep perspective on China's military and economic capacity. Assessing China's political outlook and strategic goals, Christensen shows how nationalism and the threat of domestic instability influence the party's decisions about regional and global affairs.
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UNDERSTANDING CHINA
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 03-03-23
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America's First Great Depression
- Economic Crisis and Political Disorder After the Panic of 1837
- By: Alasdair Roberts
- Narrated by: Kevin Young
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For a while, it seemed impossible to lose money on real estate. But then the bubble burst. The financial sector was paralyzed and the economy contracted. State and federal governments struggled to pay their domestic and foreign creditors. Washington was incapable of decisive action. The country seethed with political and social unrest. In America's First Great Depression, Alasdair Roberts describes how the United States dealt with the economic and political crisis that followed the Panic of 1837.
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Excellent Story
- By Timothy on 06-10-13
By: Alasdair Roberts
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America's Bank
- The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve
- By: Roger Lowenstein
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A tour de force of historical reportage, America’s Bank illuminates the tumultuous era and remarkable personalities that spurred the unlikely birth of America’s modern central bank, the Federal Reserve. Today, the Fed is the bedrock of the financial landscape, yet the fight to create it was so protracted and divisive that it seems a small miracle that it was ever established. For nearly a century, America, alone among developed nations, refused to consider any central or organizing agency in its financial system.
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Important and Intriguing
- By Jean on 11-02-15
By: Roger Lowenstein
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Why Save the Bankers?
- And Other Essays on Our Economic and Political Crisis
- By: Thomas Piketty, Seth Ackerman - translator
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Thomas Piketty's work has proved that unfettered markets lead to increasing inequality. Without meaningful regulation, capitalist economies will concentrate wealth in an ever smaller number of hands. Armed with this knowledge, democratic societies face a defining challenge: fending off a new aristocracy. For years Piketty has wrestled with this problem in his monthly newspaper column, which pierces the surface of current events to reveal the economic forces underneath.
By: Thomas Piketty, and others
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To Build a Better World
- Choices to End the Cold War and Create a Global Commonwealth
- By: Philip Zelikow, Condoleezza Rice
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Two of America's leading scholar-diplomats, Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, have combed sources in several languages, interviewed leading figures, and drawn on their own firsthand experience to bring to life the choices that molded the contemporary world. Zeroing in on the key moments of decision, the might-have-beens, and the human beings working through them, they explore both what happened and what could have happened, to show how one world ended and another took form.
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Valuable historical narrative
- By Jane G. Malkin on 04-07-22
By: Philip Zelikow, and others