Edward Conard has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators. The most-rated is The Upside of Inequality.
Unintended Consequences
Summary
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, many commonly held beliefs have emerged to explain its cause. Conventional wisdom blames Wall Street and the mortgage industry for using low down payments, teaser rates, and other predatory tactics to seduce unsuspecting home owners into assuming mortgages they couldn’t afford. It blames average Americans for borrowing recklessly and spending too much. And it blames the tax policies and deregulatory environment of the Reagan and Bush administrations for encouraging reckless risk taking by wealthy individuals and financial institutions. But according to Unintended Consequences, the conventional wisdom masks the real causes of our economic disruption and puts us at risk of a slew of unintended—and potentially dangerous—consequences. Unintended Consequences is not a book that takes a couple of insights and expands them into 300 pages; rather, it covers the entire scope of the economy. It’s a fascinating and contrarian case for how the economy really works, what went wrong over the past decade, and what steps we can take to start growing again. Whether you agree with the book’s provocative and counterintuitive conclusions or not, Unintended Consequences will reward you with a sophisticated understanding of the contemporary economy—one no other book has yet provided. Edward Conard was a partner at Bain Capital from 1993 to 2007. He served as the head of Bain’s New York office and led the firm’s acquisitions of large industrial companies. Prior to that he worked for Wasserstein Perella, an investment bank that specialized in mergers and acquisitions. He lives in New York City.
©2012 Edward Conard (P)2012 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Upside of Inequality
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of Unintended Consequences comes another bold and contrarian book by the man who famously defended capitalism and the 1 percent at the height of the Occupy movement. Conventional wisdom says income inequality is rising and harmful to nearly everyone, and the rich are to blame. But as Ed Conard shows, anyone who can produce a product valued by the entire economy will find his or her income growing faster than those who are limited by the number of customers they can serve, such as schoolteachers, plumbers, doctors, and lawyers. Consider Taylor Swift, the current queen of pop, who made $64 million in 2014. She earns more because her audience is huge, not because she takes anything away from the tens of millions of fans who happily pay for all those concert tickets, iTunes downloads, and souvenir T-shirts. Her ability to generate value can scale with the economy. The same is true for others who improve the lives of millions, like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook. The growing success of innovators doesn't hurt the rest of the workforce. In fact the opposite is true: Their success increases the demand for our middle- and working-class labor. Challenging the arguments of liberal economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, Conard reveals the truth about the income inequality panic. And by drawing on a historical study of the ebbs and flows of our economy, he proposes ways to grow the economy faster, which will benefit everyone on the income spectrum.
©2016 Edward Conard (P)2016 Penguin Audio