The Economics category has 353 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 2,738 ratings. The most-rated is Stealing Fire.
Economic Facts and Fallacies
Summary
Economic Facts and Fallacies is designed for people who want to understand economic issues without getting bogged down in economic jargon, graphs, or political rhetoric. Writing in a lively manner that does not require any prior knowledge of economics, Thomas Sowell exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues, including many that are widely disseminated in the media and by politicians: fallacies about urban problems, income differences, male-female economic differences, academia, race, and Third World countries. While all of these fallacies have a certain plausibility that gives them their staying power, this makes it even more important to carefully examine their flaws. Sowell holds these beliefs under the microscope and draws conclusions that are sure to inspire rigorous debate.
©2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Currency Wars
Summary
In 1971, President Nixon imposed national price controls and took the United States off the gold standard, an extreme measure intended to end an ongoing currency war that had destroyed faith in the U.S. dollar. Today we are engaged in a new currency war, and this time the consequences will be far worse than those that confronted Nixon. Currency wars are one of the most destructive and feared outcomes in international economics. At best, they offer the sorry spectacle of countries' stealing growth from their trading partners. At worst, they degenerate into sequential bouts of inflation, recession, retaliation, and sometimes actual violence. Left unchecked, the next currency war could lead to a crisis worse than the panic of 2008.Currency wars have happened before-twice in the last century alone-and they always end badly. Time and again, paper currencies have collapsed, assets have been frozen, gold has been confiscated, and capital controls have been imposed. And the next crash is overdue. Recent headlines about the debasement of the dollar, bailouts in Greece and Ireland, and Chinese currency manipulation are all indicators of the growing conflict.As James Rickards argues in Currency Wars, this is more than just a concern for economists and investors. The United States is facing serious threats to its national security, from clandestine gold purchases by China to the hidden agendas of sovereign wealth funds. Greater than any single threat is the very real danger of the collapse of the dollar itself.Baffling to many observers is the rank failure of economists to foresee or prevent the economic catastrophes of recent years. Not only have their theories failed to prevent calamity, they are making the currency wars worse. The U. S. Federal Reserve has engaged in the greatest gamble in the history of finance, a sustained effort to stimulate the economy by printing money on a trillion-dollar scale. Its solutions present hidden new dangers while resolving none of the current dilemmas. While the outcome of the new currency war is not yet certain, some version of the worst-case scenario is almost inevitable if U.S. and world economic leaders fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors.
©2011 James Rickards (P)2011 Gildan Media Corp
Wealth, Poverty, and Politics
Summary
In Wealth, Poverty, and Politics, Thomas Sowell, one of the foremost conservative public intellectuals in the country, argues that political and ideological struggles have led to dangerous confusion about income inequality in America. Pundits and politically motivated economists trumpet ambiguous statistics and sensational theories while ignoring the true determinant of income inequality: the production of wealth. We cannot properly understand inequality if we focus exclusively on the distribution of wealth and ignore wealth-production factors such as geography, demography, and culture. Sowell contends that liberals have a particular interest in misreading the data and chastises them for using income inequality as an argument for the welfare state. Refuting Thomas Piketty, Paul Krugman, and others, Sowell draws on empirical data to show that the inequality is not nearly as extreme or sensational as we have been led to believe. Transcending partisanship through a careful examination of data, Wealth, Poverty, and Politics reveals the truth about the most explosive political issue of our time.
©2015 Thomas Sowell (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Financial Literacy: Finding Your Way in the Financial Markets
Summary
With record-breaking highs one minute and economy-rocking lows the next, it can seem as if there's no way to feel truly comfortable in the mysterious world of finance. But there is, and it's more accessible than you might think. Financial Literacy: Finding Your Way in the Financial Markets is an essential primer on this domain, from its functions, strengths, and possibilities to its weaknesses and vulnerabilities. In 24 eye-opening lectures, an award-winning Duke University professor reveals the interconnected workings of the financial markets and how society's financial strength -and your own - depend on money flowing through these channels. You'll not only gain a new appreciation for the variety of financial products and services available to you, but also for how crucial we as individuals are to the functioning of the entire system. You'll clearly see how these markets affect you - and vice versa - any time you're involved in a financial transaction, whether you're financing a car; Applying for a mortgage Receiving a preapproved credit card offer Participating in your company's 401K plan or Making a deposit at your local bank. This course provides the concepts and tools you need to draw connections between headlines made globally and what's happening to your bottom line locally. By the final lecture, you'll understand just how interdependent the world's markets have become; feel newly at ease in the realm of stocks, bonds, derivatives, and credit; and be better able to make informed decisions for your financial future. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2013 The Great Courses (P)2013 The Teaching Company, LLC
The Box
Summary
In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried 58 shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container's creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about. Published on the 50th anniversary of the first container voyage, this is the first comprehensive history of the shipping container. It recounts how the drive and imagination of an iconoclastic entrepreneur, Malcom McLean, turned containerization from an impractical idea into a massive industry that slashed the cost of transporting goods around the world and made the boom in global trade possible. But the container didn't just happen. Its adoption required huge sums of money, both from private investors and from ports that aspired to be on the leading edge of a new technology. It required years of high-stakes bargaining with two of the titans of organized labor, Harry Bridges and Teddy Gleason, as well as delicate negotiations on standards that made it possible for almost any container to travel on any truck or train or ship. Ultimately, it took McLean's success in supplying U.S. forces in Vietnam to persuade the world of the container's potential. Drawing on previously neglected sources, economist Marc Levinson shows how the container transformed economic geography, devastating traditional ports such as New York and London and fueling the growth of previously obscure ones, such as Oakland. By making shipping so cheap that industry could locate factories far from its customers, the container paved the way for Asia to become the world's workshop and brought consumers a previously unimaginable variety of low-cost products from around the globe.
©2006, 2007 Princeton University Press (P)2014 Marc Levinson
Citizen Coke
Summary
Coke's insatiable thirst for resources shapes the company and reshapes the globe in this absorbing history. Coca-Cola's success in building a global empire out of sugary water drew on more than a secret formula and brilliant advertising. The real secret to Coke's success was its strategy, from the beginning, to offload production costs and risks onto suppliers and franchisees. Outsourcing and a trim corporate profile enabled Coke to scale up production of a low-price beverage and realize huge profits. But the costs shed by Coke have fallen on the public at large. Coke now uses an annual 79 billion gallons of water, an increasingly precious global resource, and its reliance on corn syrup has helped fuel our obesity crisis. Bartow J. Elmore explores Coke through its ingredients, showing how the company secured massive quantities of coca leaf, caffeine, sugar, and other inputs. Citizen Coke became a giant in a world of abundance; in a world of scarcity, it is a strain on resources and all who depend on them.
©2014, 2015 Bartow J. Elmore (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Quants
Summary
In March 2006, the world's richest men sipped champagne in an opulent New York hotel. They were preparing to compete in a poker tournament with Âmillion-dollar stakes. At the card table that night was Peter Muller, who managed a fabulously successful hedge fund called PDT. With him was Ken Griffin, who was the tough-as-nails head of Citadel Investment Group. There, too, were Cliff Asness, the sharp-tongued, mercurial founder of the hedge fund AQR Capital Management, and Boaz Weinstein, chess "life master" and king of the credit-default swap. Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein were among the best and brightest of a new breed, the quants. Over the past 20 years, this species of math whiz had usurped the testosterone-fueled, kill-or-be-killed risk takers who'd long been the alpha males of the world's largest casino. The quants believed that a cocktail of differential calculus, quantum physics, and advanced geometry held the key to reaping riches from the financial markets. And they helped create a digitized money-trading machine that could shift Âbillions around the globe with the click of a mouse. Few realized that night, though, that in creating this extraordinary system, men like Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein had sown the seeds for history's greatest financial disaster.
©2010 Scott Patterson (P)2010 Random House
The Infinite Machine
Summary
Written with the verve of such works as The Big Short, The History of the Future, and The Spider Network, here is the fascinating, true story of the rise of Ethereum, the second-biggest digital asset in the world, the growth of cryptocurrency, and the future of the internet as we know it. Everyone has heard of Bitcoin, but few know about the second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, which has been heralded as the "next internet". The story of Ethereum begins with Vitalik Buterin, a supremely gifted 19-year-old autodidact who saw the promise of blockchain when the technology was in its earliest stages. He convinced a crack group of coders to join him in his quest to make a super-charged, global computer. The Infinite Machine introduces Vitalik’s ingenious idea and unfolds Ethereum’s chaotic beginnings. It then explores the brilliant innovation and reckless greed the platform - an infinitely adaptable foundation for experimentation and new applications - has unleashed and the consequences that resulted as the frenzy surrounding it grew: increased regulatory scrutiny, incipient Wall Street interest, and the founding team’s effort to get the Ethereum platform to scale so it can eventually be accessible to the masses. Financial journalist and cryptocurrency expert Camila Russo details the wild and often hapless adventures of a team of hippy-anarchists, reluctantly led by an ambivalent visionary, and lays out how this new foundation for the internet will spur both transformation and fraud - turning some into millionaires and others into felons - and revolutionize our ideas about money.
©2020 Camila Russo (P)2020 HarperAudio
Thinking about Capitalism
Summary
In these 36 engaging lectures, Professor Muller takes you deep inside the perspectives on this most important and pervasive force. You'll gain fresh insights that will strengthen your understanding of capitalism's rich history, its fascinating proponents and opponents, and its startling impact on our world. These lectures take you beyond economic analysis to look at how some of the greatest intellects have thought about capitalism and its moral, political, and cultural ramifications. Covering capitalism from its 17th-century beginnings to today's era of globalization, Professor Muller explores some wide-ranging questions. What effect does capitalism have on personal development? What about the seemingly unending variety of consumer goods made possible by capitalism? Do the facts support our tendency to think about capitalism as the economic system practiced in "free" countries? Or can capitalism exist in a wide variety of political systems? These are just a few of the many provocative and absorbing questions and issues you'll untangle here. By placing capitalism in its full societal context, these lectures will enhance your ability to consider, discuss, and answer these and other critical questions - whatever your point of view. Genial and disarming, Professor Muller connects the dots from idea to idea, thinker to thinker, and helps you finally grasp the history and the concepts of this vital economic system, as well as its importance on the global economic stage and in your own life. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2008 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2008 The Great Courses
Open Veins of Latin America
Summary
Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx. Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe. Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the passions of a plundered and suffering people. An immense gathering of materials is framed with a vigorous style that never falters in its command of themes. All readers interested in great historical, economic, political, and social writing will find a singular analytical achievement, and an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak, unforgettably. This classic is now further honored by Isabel Allende's inspiring introduction. Universally recognized as one of the most important writers of our time, Allende once again contributes her talents to literature, to political principles, and to enlightenment.
©1997 Eduardo Galeano (P)2009 Audible, Inc.
Scarcity
Summary
In the blockbuster tradition of Freakonomics, a Harvard economist and a Princeton psychology professor team up to offer a surprising and empowering new way to look at everyday life, presenting a paradigm-challenging examination of how scarcity - and our flawed responses to it - shapes our lives, our society, and our culture. Why do successful people get things done at the last minute? Why does poverty persist? Why do organizations get stuck firefighting? Why do the lonely find it hard to make friends? These questions seem unconnected, yet Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir show that they are all are examples of a mindset produced by scarcity. Drawing on cutting-edge research from behavioral science and economics, Mullainathan and Shafir show that scarcity creates a similar psychology for everyone struggling to manage with less than they need. Busy people fail to manage their time efficiently for the same reasons the poor and those maxed out on credit cards fail to manage their money. The dynamics of scarcity reveal why dieters find it hard to resist temptation, why students and busy executives mismanage their time, and why sugarcane farmers are smarter after harvest than before. Once we start thinking in terms of scarcity and the strategies it imposes, the problems of modern life come into sharper focus.
©2013 Ellen Hopkins (P)2013 Simon & Schuster
The Death of Money
Summary
The international monetary system has collapsed three times in the past hundred years, in 1914, 1939, and 1971. Each collapse was followed by a period of tumult: War, civil unrest, or significant damage to the stability of the global economy. Now James Rickards, the acclaimed author of Currency Wars, shows why another collapse is rapidly approaching - and why this time, nothing less than the institution of money itself is at risk. The American dollar has been the global reserve currency since the end of the Second World War. If the dollar fails, the entire international monetary system will fail with it. No other currency has the deep, liquid pools of assets needed to do the job. Optimists have always said, in essence, that there’s nothing to worry about—that confidence in the dollar will never truly be shaken, no matter how high our national debt or how dysfunctional our government. But in the last few years, the risks have become too big to ignore. While Washington is gridlocked and unable to make progress on our long-term problems, our biggest economic competitors—China, Russia, and the oil producing nations of the Middle East—are doing everything possible to end U.S. monetary hegemony. The potential results: Financial warfare. Deflation. Hyperinflation. Market collapse. Chaos. Rickards offers a bracing analysis of these and other threats to the dollar. The fundamental problem is that money and wealth have become more and more detached. Money is transitory and ephemeral, and it may soon be worthless if central bankers and politicians continue on their current path. But true wealth is permanent and tangible, and it has real value worldwide. The author shows how everyday citizens who save and invest have become guinea pigs in the central bankers’ laboratory. The world’s major financial players—national governments, big banks, multilateral institutions—will always muddle through by patching together new rules of the game. The real victims of the next crisis will be small investors who assumed that what worked for decades will keep working. Fortunately, it’s not too late to prepare for the coming death of money. Rickards explains the power of converting unreliable money into real wealth: gold, land, fine art, and other long-term stores of value. As he writes: “The coming collapse of the dollar and the international monetary system is entirely foreseeable… Only nations and individuals who make provision today will survive the maelstrom to come.”
©2014 James Rickards (P)2014 Gildan Media LLC
Fooling Some of the People All of the Time
Summary
A rare look inside the world of activist hedge funds from one of this country's top investors. In 2002, David Einhorn, the president of Greenlight Capital, gave a speech at a charity investment conference and was asked to share his best investment idea. He described his reasons why Greenlight had sold short the shares of Allied Capital, a leader in the private finance industry. What followed was a firestorm of controversy. Allied responded with a Washington, D.C. style spin-job - attacking Einhorn and disseminating half-truths and outright lies. Undeterred by the spin-job and lies, Greenlight continued its research after the speech and discovered Allied's behavior was far worse than Einhorn ever suspected. Fooling Some of the People All of the Time is the gripping chronicle of this saga, and this edition contains all new updates from the author. Minute by minute, it delves deep inside Wall Street, showing how the $6-billion hedge fund Greenlight Capital conducts its investment research and detailing the maneuvers of an unscrupulous company. Along the way, you'll witness feckless regulators, compromised politicians, and the barricades our capital markets have erected against exposing misconduct from important Wall Street customers. Goes behind the scenes to detail the truth about investing, short selling, and the politics of business Shows the failings of Wall Street: its investment banks, analysts, journalists, and especially our government regulators Offers insights into the battles surrounding hedge funds Reveals the immense difficulties that prevent the government from sanctioning politically connected companies At its most basic level, Allied Capital is the story of Wall Street at its worst. But the story is much bigger than one little-known company. Fooling Some of the People All of the Time is an important call for effective law enforcement, free speech, and fair play.
©2008 David Einhorn (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
Behavioral Economics
Summary
Behavioral economics is the study of decision making, and of the related themes of valuation, exchange, and interpersonal interactions. Using methods from psychology, sociology, neurology, and economics, behavioral economics sheds light one of the most fundamental activities of human life:the decision process. In 24 insightful lectures, you'll learn how behavioral economists look at decision making and explore a set of key principles that offer deep insight into how we evaluate information and integrate different factors to make decisions. Most important, using real-life illustrations and case studies, each lecture offers practical tools, so that you can understand the patterns of decision making, the purposes they serve, and how to use your knowledge to make better and more satisfying decisions. In grasping the underlying factors in decision making, you'll explore key topics such as decisions regarding probability, time-related decisions, managing risk, high-stakes medical decisions, and group decision making. Professor Huettel illustrates each concept with meaningful examples, analogies, and case studies, relating the material directly to the decisions all of us make as a central part of living. This unique course gives you essential knowledge and insights for one of life's most important skills. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2014 The Great Courses (P)2014 The Teaching Company, LLC
Cradle to Cradle
Summary
"Reduce, reuse, recycle," urge environmentalists. In other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. William McDonough and Michael Braungart argue in this provocative book that this approach perpetuates a one-way, "cradle to grave" manufacturing model that dates back to the Industrial Revolution, a model that casts off as much as 90 percent of the materials it uses as waste, much of it toxic. They challenge the notion that human industry must inevitably damage the natural world. Why not take nature itself as our model? A tree produces thousands of blossoms in order to create another tree, yet we do not consider its abundance wasteful but safe, beautiful, and highly effective. "Waste equals food" is the first principle the book sets forth. Products might be designed so that, after their useful life, they provide nourishment for something new - either as "biological nutrients" that safely re-enter the environment or as "technical nutrients" that circulate within closed-loop industrial cycles without being "downcycled" into low-grade uses (as most "recyclables" now are). Elaborating their principles from experience redesigning everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, the authors make an exciting and viable case for change.
©2002 William McDonough and Michael Braungart (P)2008 Tantor
One Good Trade
Summary
An inside look at what it really takes to become a better trader. A proprietary trading firm consists of a group of professionals who trade the capital of the firm. Their income and livelihood is generated solely from their ability to take profits consistently out of the markets. The world of prop trading is mentally and emotionally challenging, but offers substantial rewards to the select few who can master this craft called trading. In One Good Trade: Inside the Highly Competitive World of Proprietary Trading, author Mike Bellafiore shares the principles and techniques that have enabled him to navigate the most challenging of markets over the past twelve years. He explains how he has imparted those techniques to an elite desk of traders at the proprietary trading firm he co-founded. In doing so, he lifts the veil on the inner workings of his firm, shedding light on the challenges of prop trading and insight on why traders succeed or fail. An important contribution to trading literature, the book will help all traders by: Emphasizing the development of skills that are critical to success, such as the fundamentals of One Good Trade, Reading the Tape, and finding Stocks In Play. Outlining the factors that really make the difference between a consistently profitable trader and one who underperforms. Sharing entertaining, hysterical, and page turning stories of traders who have excelled or failed and why, many trained by the author, with an essential trading principle wrapped inside. Becoming a better trader takes discipline, skill development, and statistically profitable trading strategies, and this book will show you how to develop all three. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2010 Mike Bellafiore (P)2012 Gildan Media
More Money Than God
Summary
The Paul Volker Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington Post journalist Sebastian Mallaby has garnered New York Times Editor’s Choice and Notable Book honors for his enthralling nonfiction. Bolstered by Mallaby’s unprecedented access to the industry, More Money Than God tells the inside story of hedge funds, from their origins in the 1960s and 1970s to their role in the financial crisis of 2007–2009.
©2010 Sebastian Mallaby (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC
A History of the United States in Five Crashes
Summary
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. The Panic of 1907; Black Tuesday (1929); Black Monday (1987); the Great Recession (2008); the Flash Crash (2010): Each of these financial implosions that caused a catastrophic drop in the American stock market is a remarkable story in its own right. But taken together, they offer a unique financial history of the American century. In A History of the United States in Five Crashes, financial executive and CNBC contributor Scott Nations examines these precipitous dips, revealing how each played a role in America's political and cultural fabric, one building upon the next to create the nation we know today. Scott Nations identifies the factors behind the disastrous runs on banks that led to the Panic of 1907, the first great scare of the 20th century. He explains why 1920s America adopted investment trusts - a practice that helped post-World War I Britain - and how they were a primary catalyst of the 1929 crash. He explores America's love affair with an expanding stock market in the 1980s - which spawned the birth of portfolio insurance that significantly contributed to the 1987 crash. And he examines the factors that led to the 2008 global meltdown and the rise of algorithmic trading, the modern financial technology that sparked the 2010 Flash Crash when American stocks lost a trillion dollars in minutes. A History of the United States in Five Crashes clearly and compellingly illustrates the connections between these financial collapses and examines the solid, clear-cut lessons they offer for preventing the next one.
©2017 Scott Nations (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
All the Devils Are Here
Summary
As soon as the financial crisis erupted, the finger-pointing began. Should the blame fall on Wall Street, Main Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue? On greedy traders, misguided regulators, sleazy subprime companies, cowardly legislators, or clueless home buyers? According to Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, two of America's most acclaimed business journalists, the real answer is all of the above-and more. Many devils helped bring hell to the economy. And the full story, in all of its complexity and detail, is like the legend of the blind men and the elephant. Almost everyone has missed the big picture. Almost no one has put all the pieces together. All the Devils Are Here goes back several decades to weave the hidden history of the financial crisis in a way no previous book has done. It explores the motivations of everyone from famous CEOs, cabinet secretaries, and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers, analysts, and Wall Street traders. It delves into the powerful American mythology of homeownership. And it proves that the crisis ultimately wasn't about finance at all; it was about human nature.
©2010 Bethany McLean (P)2010 Penguin Audio
The Killing of Uncle Sam
Summary
The expanded edition includes a new epilogue in four parts, adding an extra hour to the audiobook. Pride, greed, and power have driven men to do the unthinkable - including selling out their nations and unsuspected citizens to the most corrupt and destructive “invisible” global leaders on Earth. But how did this happen on American soil? How did the downfall begin and who were the predators that the “land of the free and home of the brave” fell victim to? And is all hope lost? This audiobook captures details of the last 200 years of American history that mainstream media does not want you to know. It dissects the “legalized” system of the private central banks that has gone unchecked, and delivers gut-wrenching truths about the real domestic and foreign enemies of the United States. With countless quotes from former presidents, prime ministers, and state officials, it will equip you with the facts that the elites have covered up for centuries and empower you to stand up for the truth. Included with this 13-hour unabridged audiobook is a bonus PDF filled with high-resolution pictures, over 1000 detailed footnotes, and other supporting content. (Dr. Rodney Howard-Browne) PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2018 River Publishing (P)2018 River Publishing