Download or read book Inside Job written by Stephen Pizzo and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller: A history of the S&L scandal that caused a financial disaster for American taxpayers: “Hard to put down” (Library Journal). For most of the 20th century, savings and loans were an invaluable thread of the American economy. But in the 1970s, Congress passed sweeping financial deregulation at the insistence of industry insiders that allowed these once quaint and useful institutions to spread their taxpayer-insured assets into new and risky investments. The looser regulations and reduced federal oversight also opened the industry to an army of shady characters, white-collar criminals, and organized crime groups. Less than 10 years later, half the nation’s savings and loans were insolvent, leaving the American taxpayer on the hook for a large hunk of the nearly half a trillion dollars that had gone missing. The authors of Inside Job saw signs of danger long before the scandal hit nationwide. Decades after the savings and loan collapse, Inside Job remains a thrilling read and a sobering reminder that our financial institutions are more fragile than they appear.
Download or read book Profit Without Honor written by Stephen M. Rosoff and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profit Without Honor: White-Collar Crime and the Looting of America seeks to elucidate a very broad subject: white-collar crime. How broad? Its domain stretches from the small price-gouging merchant to the huge price-fixing cartel. It can breed in an antiseptic hospital or a toxic dump. It is at home on Main Street, Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and countless other addresses - including, at times, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Download or read book The Looting of America written by Les Leopold and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2009-06-02 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How could the best and brightest (and most highly paid) in finance crash the global economy and then get us to bail them out as well? What caused this mess in the first place? Housing? Greed? Dumb politicians? What can Main Street do about it? In The Looting of America, Leopold debunks the prevailing media myths that blame low-income home buyers who got in over their heads, people who ran up too much credit-card debt, and government interference with free markets. Instead, readers will discover how Wall Street undermined itself and the rest of the economy by playing and losing at a highly lucrative and dangerous game of fantasy finance. He also asks some tough questions: Why did Americans let the gap between workers' wages and executive compensation grow so large? Why did we fail to realize that the excess money in those executives' pockets was fueling casino-style investment schemes? Why did we buy the notion that too-good-to-be-true financial products that no one could even understand would somehow form the backbone of America's new, postindustrial economy? How do we make sure we never give our wages away to gamblers again? And what can we do to get our money back? In this page-turning narrative (no background in finance required) Leopold tells the story of how we fell victim to Wall Street's exotic financial products. Readers learn how even school districts were taken in by "innovative" products like collateralized debt obligations, better known as CDOs, and how they sucked trillions of dollars from the global economy when they failed. They'll also learn what average Americans can do to ensure that fantasy finance never rules our economy again. As the country teeters on the brink of what could be the next Great Depression, we should be especially wary of the so-called financial experts who got us here, and then conveniently got themselves out. So far, it appears they've won the battle, but The Looting of America refuses to let them write the history--or plan its aftermath.
Download or read book The Looting of America written by Len Solo and published by . This book was released on 2016-03-10 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If Al Capone were alive today, he'd own a bank, a credit card company or a Wall Street brokerage and make more money than he ever did being a crook. He'd also be admired and respected. The economy was never an even playing field but it is worse than ever. At the same time, big money has corrupted our political system so that politicians with their hands over their hearts and flag pins in their lapels are not what they seem. Our government lies and deceives us repeatedly. Democracy was once in sight, a light at the end of the long tunnel of history but now that light is a sputtering candle in the wind. We also have now become one of the world's largest empires, bringing havoc almost everywhere we go. This is exactly where America is today: The Looting of America shows in vivid detail how we got here.
Download or read book In Defense of Looting written by Vicky Osterweil and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh argument for rioting and looting as our most powerful tools for dismantling white supremacy. Looting -- a crowd of people publicly, openly, and directly seizing goods -- is one of the more extreme actions that can take place in the midst of social unrest. Even self-identified radicals distance themselves from looters, fearing that violent tactics reflect badly on the broader movement. But Vicky Osterweil argues that stealing goods and destroying property are direct, pragmatic strategies of wealth redistribution and improving life for the working class -- not to mention the brazen messages these methods send to the police and the state. All our beliefs about the innate righteousness of property and ownership, Osterweil explains, are built on the history of anti-Black, anti-Indigenous oppression. From slave revolts to labor strikes to the modern-day movements for climate change, Black lives, and police abolition, Osterweil makes a convincing case for rioting and looting as weapons that bludgeon the status quo while uplifting the poor and marginalized. In Defense of Looting is a history of violent protest sparking social change, a compelling reframing of revolutionary activism, and a practical vision for a dramatically restructured society.
Download or read book The Looting of America Or the Science of Gold written by Clarence D. Nagle and published by . This book was released on with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Looting Spiro Mounds written by David La Vere and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author raises questions about the looting of the lost Indian burial crypt in Le Flore Co OK in 1935.
Download or read book Stealing History written by Roger Atwood and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roger Atwood knows more about the market for ancient objects than almost anyone. He knows where priceless antiquities are buried, who is digging them up, and who is fencing and buying them. In this fascinating book, Atwood takes readers on a journey through Iraq, Peru, Hong Kong, and across America, showing how the worldwide antiquities trade is destroying what's left of the ancient sites before archaeologists can reach them, and thus erasing their historical significance. And it is getting worse. The discovery of the legendary Royal Tombs of Sipan in Peru started an epidemic. Grave robbers scouring the courntryside for tombs--and finding them. Atwood recounts the incredible story of the biggest piece of gold ever found in the Americas, a 2,000-year-old, three-pound masterpiece that cost one looter his life, sent two smugglers to jail, and wrecked lives from Panama to Pennsylvainia. Packed with true stories, this book not only reveals what has been found, but at what cost to both human life and history.
Download or read book The Quiet Coup Neoliberalism and the Looting of America written by Mehrsa Baradaran and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2024-05-07 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A]ccessible and intellectually rich . . . Essential reading to understand the economic state of the nation.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred) The celebrated legal scholar and author of The Color of Money reveals how neoliberals rigged American law, creating widespread distrust, inequality, and injustice. With the nation lurching from one crisis to the next, many Americans believe that something fundamental has gone wrong. Why aren’t college graduates able to achieve financial security? Why is government completely inept in the face of natural disasters? And why do pundits tell us that the economy is strong even though the majority of Americans can barely make ends meet? In The Quiet Coup, Mehrsa Baradaran, one of our leading public intellectuals, argues that the system is in fact rigged toward the powerful, though it wasn’t the work of evil puppet masters behind the curtain. Rather, the rigging was carried out by hundreds of (mostly) law-abiding lawyers, judges, regulators, policy makers, and lobbyists. Adherents of a market-centered doctrine called neoliberalism, these individuals, over the course of decades, worked to transform the nation—and succeeded. They did so by changing the law in unseen ways. Tracing this largely unknown history from the late 1960s to the present, Baradaran demonstrates that far from yielding fewer laws and regulations, neoliberalism has in fact always meant more—and more complex—laws. Those laws have uniformly benefited the wealthy. From the work of a young Alan Greenspan in creating "Black Capitalism," to Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell’s efforts to unshackle big money donors, to the establishment of the "Law and Economics" approach to legal interpretation—in which judges render opinions based on the principles of right-wing economics—Baradaran narrates the key moments in the slow-moving coup that was, and is, neoliberalism. Shifting our focus away from presidents and national policy, she tells the story of how this nation’s?laws?came to favor the few against the many, threatening the integrity of the market and the state. Some have claimed that the neoliberal era is behind us. Baradaran shows that such thinking is misguided. Neoliberalism is a failed economic idea—it doesn’t, in fact, create more wealth or more freedom. But it has been successful nevertheless, by seizing the courts and enabling our age of crypto fraud, financial instability, and accelerating inequality. An original account of the forces that have brought us to this dangerous moment in American history, The Quiet Coup reshapes our understanding of the recent past and lights a path toward a better future.
Download or read book The Looting of America written by Jarret B. Wollstein and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 6 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book History s Greatest Heist written by Sean McMeekin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-17 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Lenin’s regime turned Russia’s priceless cultural patrimony into armored cars, trains, planes, and machine guns Historians have never resolved a central mystery of the Russian Revolution: How did the Bolsheviks, despite facing a world of enemies and leaving nothing but economic ruin in their path, manage to stay in power through five long years of civil war? In this penetrating book, Sean McMeekin draws on previously undiscovered materials from the Soviet Ministry of Finance and other European and American archives to expose some of the darkest secrets of Russia’s early days of communism. Building on one archival revelation after another, the author reveals how the Bolsheviks financed their aggression through astonishingly extensive thievery. Their looting included everything from the cash savings of private citizens to gold, silver, diamonds, jewelry, icons, antiques, and artwork. By tracking illicit Soviet financial transactions across Europe, McMeekin shows how Lenin’s regime accomplished history’s greatest heist between 1917 and 1922 and turned centuries of accumulated wealth into the sinews of class war. McMeekin also names names, introducing for the first time the compliant bankers, lawyers, and middlemen who, for a price, helped the Bolsheviks launder their loot, impoverish Russia, and impose their brutal will on millions.
Download or read book Looting America written by Stephen M. Rosoff and published by Pearson. This book was released on 2003 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book presents a vivid picture of pervasive corporate fraud. The authors, well-known authorities on criminology, argue that white collar crime is the most pernicious crime problem in America today, with financial, physical, and social costs dwarfing those of street crime. Looting America traces the historical roots of scandals infecting our economy today, with provocative information that will arouse righteous indignation."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Blowback written by Christopher Simpson and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-06-10 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A searing account of a dark “chapter in U.S. Cold War history . . . to help the anti-Soviet aims of American intelligence and national security agencies” (Library Journal). Even before the final shots of World War II were fired, another war began—a cold war that pitted the United States against its former ally, the Soviet Union. As the Soviets consolidated power in Eastern Europe, the CIA scrambled to gain the upper hand against new enemies worldwide. To this end, senior officials at the CIA, National Security Council, and other elements of the emerging US national security state turned to thousands of former Nazis, Waffen Secret Service, and Nazi collaborators for propaganda, psychological warfare, and military operations. Many new recruits were clearly responsible for the deaths of countless innocents as part of Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution,” yet were whitewashed and claimed to be valuable intelligence assets. Unrepentant mass murderers were secretly accepted into the American fold, their crimes forgotten and forgiven with the willing complicity of the US government. Blowback is the first thorough, scholarly study of the US government’s extensive recruitment of Nazis and fascist collaborators right after the war. Although others have approached the topic since, Simpson’s book remains the essential starting point. The author demonstrates how this secret policy of collaboration only served to intensify the Cold War and has had lasting detrimental effects on the American government and society that endure to this day.
Download or read book Theft of a Nation written by Gregg Barak and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theft of a Nation is a powerful criminological examination of Wall Street's recent financial meltdown. Through the lenses of white collar crime and victimology, the book presents a critical assessment of the economic and political elites who were responsible, shows how Americans were victimized, and assesses the resulting regulation.
Download or read book Downtown America written by Alison Isenberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Downtown America was once the vibrant urban center romanticized in the Petula Clark song—a place where the lights were brighter, where people went to spend their money and forget their worries. But in the second half of the twentieth century, "downtown" became a shadow of its former self, succumbing to economic competition and commercial decline. And the death of Main Streets across the country came to be seen as sadly inexorable, like the passing of an aged loved one. Downtown America cuts beneath the archetypal story of downtown's rise and fall and offers a dynamic new story of urban development in the United States. Moving beyond conventional narratives, Alison Isenberg shows that downtown's trajectory was not dictated by inevitable free market forces or natural life-and-death cycles. Instead, it was the product of human actors—the contested creation of retailers, developers, government leaders, architects, and planners, as well as political activists, consumers, civic clubs, real estate appraisers, even postcard artists. Throughout the twentieth century, conflicts over downtown's mundane conditions—what it should look like and who should walk its streets—pointed to fundamental disagreements over American values. Isenberg reveals how the innovative efforts of these participants infused Main Street with its resonant symbolism, while still accounting for pervasive uncertainty and fears of decline. Readers of this work will find anything but a story of inevitability. Even some of the downtown's darkest moments—the Great Depression's collapse in land values, the rioting and looting of the 1960s, or abandonment and vacancy during the 1970s—illuminate how core cultural values have animated and intertwined with economic investment to reinvent the physical form and social experiences of urban commerce. Downtown America—its empty stores, revitalized marketplaces, and romanticized past—will never look quite the same again. A book that does away with our most clichéd approaches to urban studies, Downtown America will appeal to readers interested in the history of the United States and the mythology surrounding its most cherished institutions. A Choice Oustanding Academic Title. Winner of the 2005 Ellis W. Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians. Winner of the 2005 Lewis Mumford Prize for Best Book in American Planning History. Winner of the 2005 Historic Preservation Book Price from the University of Mary Washington Center for Historic Preservation. Named 2005 Honor Book from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.
Download or read book Profit Without Honor written by Stephen M. Rosoff and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Obamageddon The Culmination of the Progressive Looting of America written by Bruce Kreitler and published by . This book was released on 2011-08-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Obamageddon, (the Culmination of the Progressive Looting of America) by Bruce Kreitler is a close look at the current shape of our federal government after years of intentional social and financial abuse from politicians of both sides. Years of rampant inattention by voters coupled with systematic abuse by dishonest and unscrupulous politicians has led us to the social and economic circumstances that we find our country in today. This is written from the point of view of a taxpaying, struggling, small business owner. The author isn't speaking down to readers from the lofty position of a government or political insider. Instead, He's talking to fellow Americans as one frustrated working, taxpaying citizen to another. This book is for the American taxpayer that that can't understand why our federal politicians can't seem to see the stupidity that they continually legislate for what it is. Obamageddon is written for the reader that knows we can do better, knows that it won't be that hard to turn things around and wants to understand why we seemingly elect the best and the brightest, but lose them to "bipartisanship," "political progressivism," and "inside the beltway politics." The progression of Obamageddon is from who are the people that have been and are causing our problems on through some of the issues that they use to advance their hidden agenda. There is a lot of discussion about why these items are a problem, and some of the possible reasons why Obama has made the situation worse. This book is about how Obama has hijacked the progressive freight train and turned it into a "high speed rail to destruction." What Obama is doing to the U.S., and is discussed at length in plain, everyday language. The author points out how many of the things that up to this point we have taken for granted really work against our country and need to be properly addressed. Also discussed are some of the ways or changes in thinking that might contribute to the solutions we so desperately need. Obamageddon is written by a working class conservative to help other working class people (taxpayers) understand what's happening, encourage them to help turn things around, and remind all the readers that the United States of America is not only the best country the world has ever seen, but if we will pull ourselves together and redeem our country, our best days will truly still be in front of us.
