How Money Became Dangerous

The Inside Story of Our Turbulent Relationship with Modern Finance

By: Christopher Varelas, Dan Stone

Narrated by: Roger Wayne

Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

From a veteran of the trade, a provocative and entertaining voyage into the turbulent heart of modern money that sheds new light on the rise of our threatening and complicated financial system, how money became our adversary, and why finding a new course is crucial to a healthy society.

In the not-too-distant past, money was simple. You might have had a bank account and a mortgage, perhaps some basic investments. Wall Street didn’t have a reputation for greed and recklessness. That all started to change in the '80s, as our financial systems became increasingly complex, moving beyond the understanding of the general public while impacting our lives in innumerable ways. The financial world began to feel like an enigma - a rogue force working against us, seemingly controlled by no one.

From an industry veteran who’s had firsthand involvement in the events that shaped modern money, How Money Became Dangerous journeys from the crime-ridden LA jewelry district to the cutthroat Salomon Brothers trading floor, from the high-stakes world of investment banking to the center of the technology boom, capturing the key deals, developments, and players that made the financial world what it is today. The audiobook illuminates the dark, hidden forces of Wall Street and how it has dehumanized and left behind everyday Americans.

A fresh and enlightening take on how we reached this point, How Money Became Dangerous also makes the case for why Wall Street needs to be saved, if only to save ourselves.

©2019 Christopher Varelas (P)2019 HarperAudio

A worthy 21st century successor to Liar's Poker

if you want to understand the world we live in, and enjoy the learning, read "How Money Became Dangerous". Varelas is a master story teller with a font of insightful lessons drawn from an extraordinary set of experiences.

Well worth the listen.

If you need a nuanced understanding of Wall Street and the pitfalls of the modern financial system, this is an excellent exposition.

Must read

This book should be read by anyone interested in money or finance. Informative, entertaining and funny at times.

Many-sided, thoughtful, very listenable

This is 3 books: a memoir of this author's direct experiences in finance (and he was pretty well-placed), a broader USA financial history book of the matching times (with many familiar stories to those who follow all this closely, but still well told), and some even more overview thoughts about it all. The author did a solid job all around, and in a very listenable package. I like his nuanced and multi-sided views on it all. I grate when someone is cheerleading too monotonously in one over-simplified direction. He is a guy who has been deep in finance, but is capable of caring about street-level human values. He has a good sense of the surrounding history, bigger than his own, and where some of it seems to point. It is a thoughtful mix. The guy at least postures as a bit of a marshmallow, which makes me wonder what he was doing in investment banking. But apparently his weepy side didn't wreck his deals, or cause him to give his bonuses back. Nevertheless he does engage in pretty endless hand-wringing (hence four stars), which could have been edited a bit. OK dude, you have a heart, OK? Got it. Maybe he should have been a puppy rescuer.

Highly recommend

Good storytelling, great narration, interesting inside look at mergers and acquisitions. The only thing I did not like is the book's title

An informative and entertaining book.

I really enjoyed this book for some of the following reasons:

-The informal and personal tone throughout the book made the content much more interesting than many other books that cover the topic of finance.

-I appreciated all the real life examples covering different companies and different financial instruments.

-I was shocked at the way some of the people described reacted to huge salaries and bonuses that an average person would never even dream of receiving.

I also thought the narration and how the narrator acted out other people’s voices and mannerisms was genius, and often hilarious!

Too much fluff around a few good points

The author should have been writing novels instead of this potentially great topic book. Every so often there is a stretch of great information but most of the time it lags on for 20+ minutes with storytelling that is irrelevant. I found myself hitting fast forward and jumping to the next chapter to no avail. Unless you have a lot of times on your hand look elsewhere.