The Shadow Market

How a Group of Wealthy Nations and Powerful Investors Secretly Dominate the World

By: Eric J. Weiner

Narrated by: John Allen Nelson

Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

Eric J. Weiner's critically acclaimed first book, What Goes Up: The Uncensored History of Modern Wall Street as Told by the Bankers, Brokers, CEOs, and Scoundrels Who Made It Happen, was selected as one of the year's best books by Barron's magazine and one of the year's Most Enriching Reads by Kiplinger's. Weiner has demonstrated a deep knowledge of Wall Street and how the international financial world operates.

Now, in The Shadow Market, he reveals that an enormous reshuffling of global fiscal power is taking place - and that Americans are powerless to stop it. Most of us are unaware of the multitrillion-dollar network of super-rich, secretive, and largely unregulated investment vehicles - foreign sovereign wealth funds, private equity funds, and hedge funds - that are quietly buying up the world, piece by piece. The Shadow Market tells the definitive story behind this side of high finance, the side most people rarely get to see. It doesn’t have a physical headquarters, like Wall Street or the New York Stock Exchange, or an index to track. But it's there, pulling the levers behind the curtain.

Weiner investigates the evolution of the international market that now dominates the global financial world - where money mixes with geopolitical power, sometimes invisibly, and other times quite publicly. Highly informative and sometimes startling, The Shadow Market is an urgent warning to the worldwide community and a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of the global economy, America's position in the world, or how and where to invest money.

©2010 Eric J. Weiner (P)2010 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Informative, admirably lucid." ( Publishers Weekly)

Lots of Shady Characters

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, I would still recommend this book simply for the content of the work.

What aspect of John Allen Nelson’s performance would you have changed?

John's narration was just fine until he tried to do characterizations using accents. The work became almost (cartoonish) and I think really took away from the subject matter at hand. It really would have been better just to read the story. I can imagine well enough on my own the voices of the people he was trying to emulate.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Is wincing an extreme reaction? Sigh...

This is so obvious, it's a waste.

Dark pools, private trading, off market, non-traditional asset trading, Sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds, etc. This is nothing new. If you spend more than 5 minutes in the trading world or have CNBC on in the background for a week, you'll figure this out.

Let me sum up the book in a few words: "People with more money trade bigger and therefore have greater influence."

I want my time back wasted on this book. It is so uninformative that it just boggles the mind that it was actually published. I don't find anything in this book that warrants anything but pure contempt.

You want to learn something about this financial crises read Michael Lewis, he actually was a trader/I-Banker with an axe to grind.