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Something is wrong with our banking system. We all sense that, but Mervyn King knows it firsthand; his 10 years at the helm of the Bank of England, including at the height of the financial crisis, revealed profound truths about the mechanisms of our capitalist society. In The End of Alchemy, he offers us an essential work about the history and future of money and banking, the keys to modern finance.
Eight years on from the biggest market meltdown since the Great Depression, the key lessons of the crisis of 2008 still remain unlearned - and our financial system is just as vulnerable as ever. Many of us know that our government failed to fix the banking system after the subprime mortgage crisis. But what few of us realize is how the misguided financial practices and philosophies that nearly toppled the global financial system have come to infiltrate all American businesses, putting us on a collision course with another cataclysmic meltdown.
Sebastian Mallaby's magisterial biography of Alan Greenspan, the product of over five years of research based on untrammeled access to his subject and his closest professional and personal intimates, brings into vivid focus the mysterious point where the government and the economy meet. To understand Greenspan's story is to see the economic and political landscape of the last 30 years - and the presidency, from Reagan to George W. Bush - in a whole new light.
Half of all Americans have money in the stock market, yet economists can't agree on whether investors and markets are rational and efficient, as modern financial theory assumes, or irrational and inefficient, as behavioral economists believe - and as financial bubbles, crashes, and crises suggest. This is one of the biggest debates in economics, and the value or futility of investment management and financial regulation hang on the outcome. In this groundbreaking book, Andrew W. Lo cuts through this debate with a new framework.
Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?
What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories.
Something is wrong with our banking system. We all sense that, but Mervyn King knows it firsthand; his 10 years at the helm of the Bank of England, including at the height of the financial crisis, revealed profound truths about the mechanisms of our capitalist society. In The End of Alchemy, he offers us an essential work about the history and future of money and banking, the keys to modern finance.
Eight years on from the biggest market meltdown since the Great Depression, the key lessons of the crisis of 2008 still remain unlearned - and our financial system is just as vulnerable as ever. Many of us know that our government failed to fix the banking system after the subprime mortgage crisis. But what few of us realize is how the misguided financial practices and philosophies that nearly toppled the global financial system have come to infiltrate all American businesses, putting us on a collision course with another cataclysmic meltdown.
Sebastian Mallaby's magisterial biography of Alan Greenspan, the product of over five years of research based on untrammeled access to his subject and his closest professional and personal intimates, brings into vivid focus the mysterious point where the government and the economy meet. To understand Greenspan's story is to see the economic and political landscape of the last 30 years - and the presidency, from Reagan to George W. Bush - in a whole new light.
Half of all Americans have money in the stock market, yet economists can't agree on whether investors and markets are rational and efficient, as modern financial theory assumes, or irrational and inefficient, as behavioral economists believe - and as financial bubbles, crashes, and crises suggest. This is one of the biggest debates in economics, and the value or futility of investment management and financial regulation hang on the outcome. In this groundbreaking book, Andrew W. Lo cuts through this debate with a new framework.
Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?
What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories.
All too frequently leadership is reduced to a simple dichotomy: the strong versus the weak. Yet there are myriad ways to exercise effective political leadership - as well as different ways to fail. We blame our leaders for economic downfalls and praise them for vital social reforms, but rarely do we question what makes some leaders successful while others falter.
Over the course of a decade spent reporting on the ground in China as a financial journalist, Dinny McMahon gradually came to the conclusion that the widely held belief in China’s inevitable economic ascent is dangerously wrong. Debt, entrenched vested interests, a frenzy of speculation, and an aging population are all pushing China toward an economic reckoning. China’s Great Wall of Debt unravels an incredibly complex and opaque economy, one whose fortunes - for better or worse - will shape the globe like never before.
For over 20 years, a select group of Yale undergraduates has been admitted into the year-long "Grand Strategy" seminar team-taught by John Lewis Gaddis and Paul Kennedy. Its purpose: to provide a grounding in strategic decision-making in the face of crisis to prepare future American leaders for important work. Now, John Lewis Gaddis has transposed the experience of that course into a wonderfully succinct, lucid and inspirational book, a view from the commanding heights of statesmanship across the landscape of world history from the ancient Greeks to Lincoln, and beyond.
Early in the 21st century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, R&D, or software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers. For all sorts of businesses, from tech firms and pharma companies to coffee shops and gyms, the ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is increasingly the main source of long-term success.
Donald Trump's presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we'd be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang--in a revolution or military coup--but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms.
From the days of the Mayflower and the Virginia Company, America has been a place for people to dream, invent, build, tinker, and bet the farm in pursuit of a better life. Americana takes us on a 400-year journey of this spirit of innovation and ambition through a series of Next Big Things - the inventions, techniques, and industries that drove American history forward: from the telegraph, the railroad, guns, radio, and banking, to flight, suburbia, and sneakers, culminating with the Internet and mobile technology at the turn of the 21st century.
Ray Dalio, one of the world's most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares the unconventional principles that he's developed, refined, and used over the past 40 years to create unique results in both life and business - and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals.
On January 26, 2009, during the depth of the financial crisis and having just completed five years as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Timothy F. Geithner was sworn in by President Barack Obama as the 75th Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. Now, in a strikingly candid, riveting, and historically illuminating memoir, Geithner takes listeners behind the scenes during the darkest moments of the crisis.
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.
It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person's or government's control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.
As the stock market crash of 1929 plunged the world into turmoil, two men emerged with competing claims on how to restore the balance to economies gone awry. John Maynard Keynes, the mercurial Cambridge economist, believed that government had a duty to spend when others would not. He met his opposite in a little-known Austrian economics professor, Friedrich Hayek, who considered attempts to intervene both pointless and potentially dangerous.
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West but worldwide.
A New York Times Best Seller
In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, home appliances, motor vehicles, air travel, air conditioning, and television transformed households and workplaces. With medical advances, life expectancy between 1870 and 1970 grew from 45 to 72 years. Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of American Growth provides an in-depth account of this momentous era. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end?
Gordon challenges the view that economic growth can or will continue unabated, and he demonstrates that the life-altering scale of innovations between 1870 and 1970 can't be repeated. He contends that the nation's productivity growth, which has already slowed to a crawl, will be further held back by the vexing headwinds of rising inequality, stagnating education, an aging population, and the rising debt of college students and the federal government. Gordon warns that the younger generation may be the first in American history that fails to exceed their parents' standard of living, and that rather than depend on the great advances of the past, we must find new solutions to overcome the challenges facing us.
A critical voice in the debates over economic stagnation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth is at once a tribute to a century of radical change and a harbinger of tougher times to come.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
I loved the review of the industrial revolution and learning where various technological changes came from. His suggestions of how to increase American growth seemed pretty standard though. I was disappointed with that. It seemed like he just phoned in that part of the book. We've heard all those recommendations before. The book is worth the time though.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful
I enjoyed this book, particularly the comparisons of life in the US before and after 1870.There are too many charts and numbers in this book to always allow one to only listen. Book was written to be read "in person" with numbers and charts available for viewing and reviewing. The performance was technically well done, but somehow off-putting and slightly irritating. Still all in all I listened to the entire book and am happy that I bought it.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
What disappointed you about The Rise and Fall of American Growth?
If you are looking to get a critical, deep and informed view of american economy in last century, you should look for another book. This book is not the type that will leave you with any food for thought.
For instance the book goes literally pages and pages throwing an absurd amount of numbers, dates, percentages,... to just show how AC units become smaller and lighter in a period of two decades. A simple fact like this needs only one sentence or two, and then the reader is ready to get the writers message, if there is any. What happens with this book is that reader (listener) goes on and on trying to focus on long paragraphs of chart description and numbers and dates, waiting for the writer to sum it up and get to a conclusion, a view point or a critical thought on the issue, only to get disappointed.
The only message that the author has (and he iterates it over and over in different chapters) is this: The growth (in other words improvement in people's lives) has been huge in 20th century because the departure point was near zero, so any increase felt huge, but now that we are fairly advanced it is almost impossible to come up with such growth ( such improvement in people's lives) in such a short amount of time. For example, in a matter of 2 decades in early 1900s, flush toilets came to nearly all houses and that dramatically improved life expectancy (say 5 years) by eliminating water borne diseases. But now in 2000s if we want to increase life expectancy by same 5 years (having same "growth") it is not as easy as making a toilet, now we have to do cancer research instead.
I basically doubt if this is an important or valuable point of view anyways, but even if it was, it could be well developed in a 3 page article and did not need a 700+ page book.
This book is only good for you if you love details of how people lived in early 20th century, how daily tasks were done, how people worked, what the wore, what they ate...and so forth. but if you are looking for food for thought, you will be disappointed.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful
love economics and hearing about how the world has changed in the past 100 years. this book does rely on lots of charts and graphs so the listener is often lost following along but over all worth a listen.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
very detailed analysis on the explosive growth in the US economy and it's decline since the 1970s.
I applaud the performance on this audio book, 30 hours of recorded material is no light matter!
This is excellent economic history that manages to take lots and lots of data tables and charts and render them entirely accessible in an audio book. The author manages to connect economic change to real life in a clear and powerful way. I’ve taught this era of us History for over twenty five years and I knew of just about all of the technological developments he covers, but don’t think I ever fully grasped their significance till now. Certainly, I understand things differently now. One factor that might put some off is that there is a fair amount of repetition. However, I think it works well - he carefully lays out a thesis for each chapter, develops it, and ten reviews it. If you want to understand economic history, this is one way to get the information to stick.
His basic argument is that the changes in standard of living between roughly 1870 and 1940 were a one time revolutionary event in human history, and that the economic growth that persisted until 1970 was a result of those changes settling in. Since 1940 technological innovation has continued, but without the same impact on daily life as before (ex. Cars are a lot better today than in 1940, but nowhere near the difference between a horse and a car/ a 2018 refrigerator is much better than a 1940 fridge, but the difference is not as great as an icebox and the 1940 electric fridge, and so on). For our time, he makes compelling arguments about the headwinds threatening economic growth and sees rising inequality as the major threat. He makes a number of carefully considered policy proposals. This is important work.
The performer is generally very good, but he has the annoying habit of trying to use accents when reading quotes - this is farcical when attempting foreign accents and I have no idea why we think people I the 1800s sounded so odd. The bottom line is that this isn’t Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings and most people listening to a book on the historical development of the standard of living are not expecting to be entertained. But that’s my only complaint - he’s very good when reading straight text and makes it almost a conversation with the listener - just drop the accents.
This book is so full of fascinating incites, which isn’t easy given its length, that I could and probably will listen to it a second or even third time. I made numerous bookmarks. It should be a required text in any economics or civics curriculum. It’s essential listening.
Book the narration is SO FLAT and uninspired. Perhaps an editor could have helped prepare the content for listeners, because it’s vitally important material.
To be honest, this book is tough to get through. Even though it covers a subject I have a lot of interest in, I must have started and finished at least ten other books between the time I started this one, and the day I finally finished it.
He gets 4 stars for his excellent job compiling data, but his conclusions are iffy, and he stepped outside of his expertise with some speculation a few times (e.g. diet comments stuck out to me). Conservative economist Deirdre McCloskey said in and interview that, "Bob Gordon lost his mind," in reference to this book. That doesn't mean he is wrong, but you can guess where his conclusions lean.
What didn’t you like about Michael Butler Murray’s performance?
There were an awful lot of words mispronounced, over and over. "Inexorably", for example. It's as if the narrator and the editor had never heard them. Once I noticed, it was hard to do anything except anticipate the next one.
This was an interesting concept and extremely well researched. I'm glad that this book exists. However, unless you are way nerdy about this sort of thing, you will wish that there was a shorter version. I feel like the argument could have been made for the laymen in half the time or less. Thankfully I could just advance the track by 30 seconds whenever it got into the weeds too much. Great book, unfortunately no one will read it since it's so darn long.
The book is very interesting, amazingly full of facts and interesting descriptions, although one may disagree with the interpretation.
As to the narration,why must the person read as if they were imitating a computer? is that Audible policy?
But my biggest complaint is that you offer a pdf with all the graphs and tables referred to in the book, but I have not been able to download it. Where is it available? Who knows!
1 of 1 people found this review helpful