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.
Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School
Summary
The second edition of the fun and fascinating guide to the main ideas of the Austrian School of economics, written in sparkling prose, especially for the non-economist. Gene Callahan shows that good economics isn't about government planning or statistical models - it's about human beings and the choices they make in the real world.
This may be the most important book of its kind since Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. Though written for the beginner, it has been justly praised by scholars too, including Israel Kirzner, Walter Block, and Peter Boettke.
©2004 Eugene Callahan (P)2018 Listen and Think Audio
The Coming Bond Market Collapse
Summary
A book that is certain to spark controversy within the financial media and throughout the halls of government, The Coming Bond Market Collapse sounds a clarion call to investors, business leaders, and policymakers. Author Michael Pento, a noted adherent of the Austrian school of economics theories, compellingly argues that the United States is fast approaching the end stage of the biggest asset bubble in history. He describes how the bursting of that bubble will trigger a massive interest rate shock that will send the US consumer-driven economy and the US government - now pumped up by massive Treasury debt - into bankruptcy, an event that, in turn, will send violent shock waves throughout the global economy. Backed by a wealth of historical and economic data, Mr. Pento examines how the policies followed by both the Federal Reserve and private industry have led, inexorably, to the impending disaster, and he exposes alarming parallels between the US and European debt crises. But this book isn't all doom and gloom. A top market analyst who accurately foretold the bursting of the housing bubble in most major print and TV media, Michael Pento also provides well-reasoned solutions that government, industry, and individual investors can take to insulate themselves against the coming crisis. Just as importantly, Mr. Pento delivers proven strategies and tools investors can use to successfully navigate the rocky times ahead and to not only survive the crisis but capitalize on it.
©2013 Michael G. Pento (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Mystery of Banking
Summary
Talk about great timing. Rothbard's extraordinary book unravels the mystery of banking: What is legitimate enterprise and what is a government-backed shell game that can't last? His explanation is clear enough for anyone to follow and yet precise and rigorous enough to be the best textbook for college classes on the topic. This is because its expository clarity - in its history and theory - is essentially unrivaled. Most notably, he uses the T-account method of explaining the relationship between deposits and loans, showing the inherent instability of fractional reserve banking and how it sets the stage for centralization, inflation, and the boom-bust cycle. But there is more here. It is an explanation of money's origins and its meaning in the free market. The abstract theory is here but always with real application in history and in modern banking practice. Never does a paragraph go by without an example drawn from his massive knowledge of the subject. Even further, he explains the integration between microeconomics and the business cycle. As Douglas French writes in the introduction: "Although first published 25 years ago, Murray Rothbard's The Mystery of Banking continues to be the only book that clearly and concisely explains the modern fractional reserve banking system, its origins, and its devastating effects on the lives of every man, woman, and child. It is especially appropriate in a year that will see: a surge in bank failures, central banks around the globe bailing out failed commercial and investment banks, double-digit inflation rates in many parts of the world and hyperinflation completely destroying Zimbabwe's economy, that a new edition of Rothbard's classic work be published and made available through the efforts of Lew Rockwell and the staff at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Priced affordably for students and laymen interested in the vagaries of banking and how inflation and business cycles are created."
©1983, 2008 Ludwig von Mises Institute (P)2016 Ludwig von Mises Instiutute
A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism
Summary
New second edition with new intro by Hans Hoppe
Here is Hans Hoppe's first treatise in English - actually his first book in English - and the one that put him on the map as a social thinker and economist to watch. He argued that there are only two possible archetypes in economic affairs: socialism and capitalism. All systems are combinations of those two types. The capitalist model he defines as pure protection of private property, free association, and exchange - no exceptions. All deviations from that ideal are species of socialism, with public ownership and interference with trade. Within the structure of socialism, he distinguishes the left and right version. "Conservative" socialism favors high regulation, behavioral controls, protectionism, and nationalism. The "liberal" version tends more toward outright public ownership and redistribution. The consequences of socialism vary based on their degree and kind, but they have similarities: high costs, resource waste, low growth.
This treatise has long been out of print, but is now available again for use in comparative-systems classes, and for an orientation to the theory of economic systems. The theoretical apparatus is Rothbardian to the core, and its main contribution is to provide an organizing principle for understanding the structure of real-world economies as measured against pure types. A tour de force. This edition preserves the formatting from the original publisher, for reasons of citation. Though it was published by a major academic publishing house, the visuals are not what they might have been. Nonetheless, the book is well cited, and this edition makes it possible to navigate those citations.
©2010 Ludwig von Mises Institute (P)2019 Ludwig von Mises Institute
The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes
Summary
The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes investigates the trade routes between Rome and the powerful empires of inner Asia, including the Parthian regime which ruled ancient Persia (Iran). It explores Roman dealings with the Kushan Empire which seized power in Bactria (Afghanistan) and laid claim to the Indus Kingdoms. Further chapters examine the development of Palmyra as a leading caravan city on the edge of Roman Syria and consider trade ventures through the Tarim territories that led Roman merchants to Han China. The Han Empire of ancient China matched that of Rome in scale and possessed military technology surpassing that of Roman legions. The Han established a system of Central Asian trade routes known as the Silk Road that carried eastern products as far as Persia and the frontiers of the Roman Empire. This is the first audiobook to address these subjects in a single comprehensive study. It explores Rome's impact on the ancient world economy and reveals what the Chinese and Romans knew about their rival Empires.
©2016 Raoul McLaughlin (P)2019 Tantor
Meltdown
Summary
The media tells us that "deregulation" and "unfettered free markets" have wrecked our economy and will continue to make things worse without a heavy dose of federal regulation. But the real blame lies elsewhere. In Meltdown, best-selling author Thomas E. Woods, Jr., unearths the real causes behind the collapse of housing values and the stock market---and it turns out the culprits reside more in Washington than on Wall Street. And the trillions of dollars in federal bailouts? Our politicians' ham-handed attempts to fix the problems they themselves created will only make things much worse. Woods, a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and winner of the 2006 Templeton Enterprise Award, busts the media myths and government spin. He explains how government intervention in the economy---from the Democratic hobby horse called Fannie Mae to affirmative action programs like the Community Redevelopment Act---actually caused the housing bubble. Most important, Woods, author of the New York Times best seller The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, traces this most recent boom-and-bust---and all such booms and busts of the past century---back to one of the most revered government institutions of all: the Federal Reserve System, which allows busybody bureaucrats and ambitious politicians to pull the strings of our financial sector and manipulate the value of the very money we use. Meltdown, which features a foreword by Congressman Ron Paul (R - Texas), also provides a timely history lesson to counter the current clamor for a new New Deal. The Great Depression, Woods demonstrates, was only as deep and as long as it was because of the government interventions by Herbert Hoover (no free-market capitalist, despite what your high-school history teacher may have taught you) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (no savior of the American economy, in spite of what the mainstream media says). If you want to understand what caused the fi...
©2009 Thomas E. Woods, Jr. (P)2009 Tantor
The Economics Book
Summary
From Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, to Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes, to the top economic thought leaders of today, The Economics Book is the essential audio reference for students and anyone else with an interest in how economies work. An easy-to-follow style, succinct quotations, and thoroughly accessible text throw light on the applications of economics, making them relatable through everyday examples and concerns. Employing DK's trademark straightforward approach, The Economics Book takes a frequently confusing subject and makes sense of it, clearly highlighting both historically important and emerging ideas in this critical field of science.
©2014 DK (P)2019 Random House Audio
The Lords of Creation
Summary
An acclaimed classic detailing the economic history of America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and exposing the capitalist giants who changed the world. Frederick Lewis Allen’s insightful financial history of the United States - from the late 1800s through the stock market collapse of 1929 - remains a seminal work on what brought on America’s worst economic disaster: the Great Depression. In the decades following the Civil War, America entered an era of unprecedented corporate expansion, with ultimate financial power in the hands of a few wealthy industrialists who exploited the capitalist system for everything it was worth. The Rockefellers, Fords, Morgans, and Vanderbilts were the "lords of creation" who, along with like-minded magnates, controlled the economic destiny of the country, unrestrained by regulations or moral imperatives. Through a combination of foresight, ingenuity, ruthlessness, and greed, America’s giants of industry remolded the US economy in their own preferred image. In so doing, they established their absolute power and authority, ensuring that they - and they alone - would control the means of production, transportation, energy, and commerce - thereby setting the stage for the most devastating global financial collapse in history. As Gretchen Morgenson thoughtfully states in her introduction, "It is not immediately clear why the frequency and severity of financial scandals is increasing in the United States. What is clear is that we need to understand the origins of these disasters, as well as the policies and people that bring them on.... While distant actions may seem unrelated to current events, rereading about the past almost always provides surprising insights into the present."
©1935 Frederick Lewis Allen (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Introduction to Black Swan Theory
Summary
From 9/11 to the recession of 2007, these are events that have scared history and the United States of America. They were unprecedented by the people of those days, yet, we look back at those events and saw the impending signs of what was to happen. Nassim Nicholas Taleb accounted for these events and our perspectives today as the Black Swan Theory. Much like how what seemed to be the norm and logical answer to the question “what’s the color of a swan?” and then baffled by the discovery of black swans in Western Australia, people did not see these events coming. In fact, they seemed to have deluded, biased, believed that there was no way a war can break out in a civilized world. That there will be no more events matching the Great Depression and that nuclear war is only a story in American fiction movies.
©2019 IntroBooks (P)2019 IntroBooks
Sugar in the Blood
Summary
In the late 1630s, lured by the promise of the New World, Andrea Stuart's earliest known maternal ancestor, George Ashby, set sail from England to settle in Barbados. He fell into the life of a sugar plantation owner by mere chance, but by the time he harvested his first crop, a revolution was fully under way: the farming of sugar cane, and the swiftly increasing demands for sugar worldwide, would not only lift George Ashby from abject poverty and shape the lives of his descendants, but it would also bind together ambitious White entrepreneurs and enslaved Black workers in a strangling embrace. Stuart uses her own family story - from the 17th century to the present - as the pivot for this epic tale of migration, settlement, survival, slavery, and the making of the Americas. As it grew, the sugar trade enriched Europe as never before, financing the Industrial Revolution and fuelling the Enlightenment. It also became the basis of many economies in South America, played an important part in the evolution of the United States as a world power, and transformed the Caribbean into an archipelago of riches. But this sweet and hugely profitable trade - “white gold”, as it was known - had profoundly less palatable consequences in its precipitation of the enslavement of Africans to work the fields on the islands and, ultimately, throughout the American continents. Interspersing the tectonic shifts of colonial history with her family's experience, Stuart explores the interconnected themes of settlement, sugar, and slavery with extraordinary subtlety and sensitivity. In examining how these forces shaped her own family - its genealogy, intimate relationships, circumstances of birth, varying hues of skin - she illuminates how her family, among millions of others like it, in turn transformed the society in which they lived and how that interchange continues to this day. Shifting between personal and global history, Stuart gives us a deepened understanding of the connections between continents, between Black and White, between men and women, between the free and the enslaved. It is a story brought to life with riveting and unparalleled immediacy, a story of fundamental importance to the making of our world.
©2013 Andrea Stuart (P)2013 Tantor
Economics for the Common Good
Summary
From Nobel Prize-winning economist Jean Tirole, a bold new agenda for the role of economics in society. When Jean Tirole won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics, he suddenly found himself being stopped in the street by complete strangers and asked to comment on issues of the day, no matter how distant from his own areas of research. His transformation from academic economist to public intellectual prompted him to reflect further on the role economists and their discipline play in society. The result is Economics for the Common Good, a passionate manifesto for a world in which economics, far from being a "dismal science," is a positive force for the common good. Economists are rewarded for writing technical papers in scholarly journals, not joining in public debates. But Tirole says we urgently need economists to engage with the many challenges facing society, helping to identify our key objectives and the tools needed to meet them. To show how economics can help us realize the common good, Tirole shares his insights on a broad array of questions affecting our everyday lives and the future of our society, including global warming, unemployment, the post-2008 global financial order, the euro crisis, the digital revolution, innovation, and the proper balance between the free market and regulation. Providing a rich account of how economics can benefit everyone, Economics for the Common Good sets a new agenda for the role of economics in society. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2017 Princeton University Press (P)2018 Audible, Inc.
The Devil's Financial Dictionary
Summary
Your Survival Guide to the Hades of Wall Street The Devil's Financial Dictionary skewers the plutocrats and bureaucrats who gave us exploding mortgages, freakish risks, and banks too big to fail. And it distills the complexities, absurdities, and pomposities of Wall Street into plain truths and aphorisms anyone can understand. An indispensable survival guide to the hostile wilderness of today's financial markets, The Devil's Financial Dictionary delivers practical insights with a scorpion's sting. It cuts through the fads and fakery of Wall Street and clears a safe path for investors between euphoria and despair. Staying out of financial purgatory has never been this fun.
©2015 Jason Zweig (P)2015 Gildan Media LLC
Biomimicry
Summary
This "valuable and entertaining" (New York Times Book Review) book explores how scientists are adapting nature's best ideas to solve tough 21st-century problems. Biomimicry is rapidly transforming life on earth. Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and adapt them for human use. The results are revolutionizing how materials are invented and how we compute, heal ourselves, repair the environment, and feed the world. Janine Benyus takes listeners into the lab and in the field with maverick thinkers as they: discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they're sick; learn how to create by watching spiders weave fibers; harness energy by examining how a leaf converts sunlight into fuel in trillionths of a second; and many more examples. Composed of stories of vision and invention, personalities and pipe dreams, Biomimicry is a must-listen for anyone interested in the shape of our future.
©2009 Janine M. Benyus (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Trucking Business: 3 Manuscripts in 1 Book
Summary
This book contains three manuscripts: How to Start a Freight Brokerage Business, How to Start a Trucking Business, and Hotshot Trucking. Finally a guide that shows you everything you need to know to start your own trucking business! If you want to learn how to start your own trucking business and learn how to make it successful, then this book is for you! Here’s the deal: Most people are hesitant to start a trucking business because they have no clue where to start. Fortunately, this book will teach you everything you need to know in order to get started. Of course, just getting started is only half the battle. You also need to learn how to build a successful business, and this book will help you out with that as well. Here are a few of the things you’ll discover in this book: The proper mindset you must have in order to succeed in the trucking business. The pros and cons of different business structures such as sole proprietorships, LLCs, and partnerships. The correct way to go about hiring employees to help ensure you build an outstanding team. The best way to get freight for your business. Common mistakes you’ll want to avoid making that commonly run beginners out of business. How to properly write a business plan to allow for the best possible chance of a fast start in your business. And much more... Imagine what it would feel like to start your own business and finally be in control of when you work and how much you earn. By following the guidelines outlined in this book you can do just that! Scroll up, click the "buy now" button, and get started on the path to creating your own business today!
©2019 Colton Ryder (P)2019 Colton Ryder
Silver: Get Your Share of the Greatest Wealth Transfer
Summary
Silver is probably the most undervalued asset in the history of the world today, but not for long. In this audiobook I attempt to build a case for investing in silver now. Based upon the fundamentals and the eventual return of normalcy in the markets, silver should yield fantastic returns for those souls who can go against the grain of current thought. The fundamentals for silver are very, very favorable, but not if you listen to the talking heads in the mainstream media. Do yourself a favor and get the facts before dismissing silver as a dead relic of the past.
©2014 Chas Harrison (P)2015 Chas Harrison
The Story of Silver
Summary
How silver influenced 200 years of world history, and why it matters today This is the story of silver's transformation from soft money during the 19th century to hard asset today, and how manipulations of the white metal by American president Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930s and by the richest man in the world, Texas oil baron Nelson Bunker Hunt, during the 1970s altered the course of American and world history. FDR pumped up the price of silver to help jump start the US economy during the Great Depression, but this move weakened China, which was then on the silver standard, and facilitated Japan's rise to power before World War II. Bunker Hunt went on a silver-buying spree during the 1970s to protect himself against inflation and triggered a financial crisis that left him bankrupt. Silver has been the preferred shelter against government defaults, political instability, and inflation for most people in the world because it is cheaper than gold. The white metal has been the place to hide when conventional investments sour, but it has also seduced sophisticated investors throughout the ages like a siren. This book explains how powerful figures, up to and including Warren Buffett, have come under silver's thrall, and how its history guides economic and political decisions in the 21st century.
©2019 William L. Silber (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing
The Privatization of Roads and Highways
Summary
The Mises Institute is pleased to introduce Walter Block's remarkable new treatise on private roads that'll cause you to rethink the whole of the way modern transportation networks operate. It's bold, innovative, radical, and compelling and shows how free-market economic theory is the clarifying lens through which to see the failures of the state and see the alternative that's consistent with human liberty. He shows that even the worst off-the-cuff scenario of life under private ownership of roads would be fantastic by comparison to the existing reality of government ownership of roads, which is awful in ways we don't entirely realize until Block fully explains them (think: highway deaths). But that's only the beginning of what Professor Block has done. He has made a lengthy, detailed, and positive case that the privatization of roads would be socially optimal in every way. It would save lives, curtail pollution, save us (as individuals!) money, save us massive time, introduce accountability, and make transportation a pleasure instead of a huge pain in the neck. Because this is the first-ever complete book on this topic, the length and detail are absolutely necessary. He shows that this isn't some libertarian pipe dream but the most practical application of free-market logic. Block is dealing with something that confronts us every day. And in so doing, he illustrates the power of economic theory to take an existing set of facts and help see them in a completely different way. What's also nice is that the prose has great passion about it, despite its scholarly detail. Block loves answering the objections (aren't roads public goods? Aren't roads too expensive to build privately?) and making the case, fully aware that he has to overcome a deep and persistent bias in favor of public ownership.
©2009 Ludwig von Mises Institute (P)2015 Ludwig von Mises Institute
Bitcoin: Independence Reimagined
Summary
This follow-up to Bitcoin: Sovereignty Through Mathematics describes the old boxes we have been operating within, and how Bitcoin encourages us to challenge and reshape them. It takes the listener deeper down the rabbit hole and reveals how the honey badger that lives there is still indifferent to people's opinions about it.
©2020 Knut Svanholm (P)2020 Guy Swann
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Tough Times, Tough People
Summary
Tough times won’t last, but tough people will. Many people have lost money and many are losing their jobs, homes, or at least making cutbacks. Many others have faced life-changing natural disasters, such as hurricanes and fires, as well as health and family difficulties Chicken Soup for the Soul: Tough Times, Tough People is all about overcoming adversity, pulling together, making do with less, facing challenges, and finding new joys in a simpler life. Includes 10 bonus stories of faith.
©2009 Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, llc (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Money for Nothing
Summary
The sweeping story of how the greatest minds of the Scientific Revolution applied their new ideas to people, money, and markets - and along the way, invented modern finance. Longlisted for the Financial Times and Mckinsey Business Book of the Year Award "An astounding episode from the early days of financial markets that to this day continues to intrigue and perplex historians...narrative history at its best, lively and fresh with new insights." (Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lords of Finance) Money for Nothing chronicles the moment when the needs of war, discoveries of natural philosophy, and ambitions of investors collided. It's about how the Scientific Revolution intertwined with finance to set England - and the world - off in an entirely new direction. At the dawn of the 18th century, England was running out of money due to a prolonged war with France. Parliament tried raising additional funds by selling debt to its citizens, taking in money now with the promise of interest later. It was the first permanent national debt, but still they needed more. They turned to the stock market - a relatively new invention itself - where Isaac Newton's new mathematics of change over time, which he applied to the motions of the planets and the natural world, were fast being applied to the world of money. What kind of future returns could a person expect on an investment today? The Scientific Revolution could help. In the hub of London's stock market - Exchange Alley - the South Sea Company hatched a scheme to turn pieces of the national debt into shares of company stock, and over the spring of 1720 the plan worked brilliantly. Stock prices doubled, doubled again, and then doubled once more, getting everyone in London from tradespeople to the Prince of Wales involved in money mania that consumed the people, press, and pocketbooks of the empire. Unlike science, though, with its tightly controlled experiments, the financial revolution was subject to trial and error on a grand scale, with dramatic, sometimes devastating consequences for people's lives. With England at war and in need of funds and "stock-jobbers" looking for any opportunity to get in on the action, this new world of finance had the potential to save the nation - but only if it didn't bankrupt it first.
©2020 Thomas Levenson (P)2020 Random House Audio