Download or read book The Bank That Lived a Little written by Philip Augar and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on unparalleled access to those involved, and told with compelling pace and drama, The Bank that Lived a Little describes three decades of boardroom intrigue at one of Britain's biggest financial institutions. In a tale of feuds, grandiose dreams and a struggle for supremacy between rival strategies and their adherents, Philip Augar gives a riveting account of Barclays' journey from an old Quaker bank to a full-throttle capitalist machine. The disagreement between those ambitious for Barclays to join the top table of global banks, and those preferring a smaller domestic role more in keeping with the bank's traditions, cost three chief executives their jobs and continues to divide opinion within Barclays, the City and beyond. This is an extraordinary corporate thriller, which among much else describes how Barclays came to buy Lehman Brothers for a bargain price in 2008, why it was so keen to avoid taking government funding during the financial crisis, and the price shareholders have paid for a decade of barely controlled ambition. But Augar also shows how Barclays' experiences are a paradigm for Britain's social and economic life over thirty years, which saw the City move from the edge of the economy to its very centre. These decades created unprecedented prosperity for a tiny number, and made the reputations of governments and individuals but then left many of them in tatters. The leveraged society, the winner-takes-all mentality and our present era of austerity can all be traced to the influence of banks such as Barclays. Augar's book tells this rollercoaster story from the perspective of many of its participants - and also of those affected by the grip they came to have on Britain.
Download or read book Call Me Lumpy written by Bank Bank and published by Taylor Trade Publishing. This book was released on 1997-07-01 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frank Bank's story is a sometimes wild, sometimes bawdy, often poignant, always funny account of a real-life Louie Louie who led a nation to California-dreamin'.
Download or read book The Unbanking of America written by Lisa Servon and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2017-01-10 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why Americans are fleeing our broken banking system: “Startling and absorbing…Required reading for fans of muckraking authors like Barbara Ehrenreich.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) What do an undocumented immigrant in the South Bronx, a high-net-worth entrepreneur, and a twentysomething graduate student have in common? All three are victims of our dysfunctional mainstream bank and credit system. Nearly half of all Americans live from paycheck to paycheck, and income volatility has doubled over the past thirty years. Banks, with their high monthly fees and overdraft charges, are gouging their lower- and middle-income customers while serving only the wealthiest Americans. Lisa Servon delivers a stunning indictment of America’s banks, together with eye-opening dispatches from inside a range of banking alternatives that have sprung up to fill the void. She works as a teller at RiteCheck, a check-cashing business in the South Bronx, and as a payday lender in Oakland. She looks closely at the workings of a tanda, an informal lending club. And she delivers engaging, hopeful portraits of the entrepreneurs reacting to the unbanking of America by designing systems to creatively serve those outside the one percent. “Valuable evidence on the fragility of the personal economies of most Americans these days.”—Kirkus Reviews “An intelligent plea for financial justice…[An] excellent book.”—The Christian Science Monitor
Download or read book On the Banks of Plum Creek written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2006-12-21 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laura and her family move to Minnesota where they live in a dugout until a new house is built and face misfortunes caused by flood, blizzard, and grasshoppers.
Download or read book Affliction written by Russell Banks and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 1998-09-29 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wade Whitehouse, divorced, estranged from his young daughter, spends his days as a well-driller, snow-plow operator, and policeman, his nights in a wind-swept trailer park. But when a union boss is killed in an apparent hunting accident near Wade's home, and he is convinced that it is murder, he seizes the event as a chance to right many wrongs—unaware that as he unravels the mystery he himself will become unravelled. Soon his hunger for justice and self-respect become inseparable from a desperate violence.
Download or read book Look to Windward written by Iain Banks and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eight hundred years after the most horrific battle of the Idiran war, light from its world-destroying detonations is about to reach the Masaq Orbital, home to the Culture. Major Quilan has supposedly come to take the exiled Composer Ziller back to their war-ravaged home world, Chel. But despite the major's civilized veneer, his true mission may be the death and destruction of an entire civilization.
Download or read book Fragile by Design written by Charles W. Calomiris and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why stable banking systems are so rare Why are banking systems unstable in so many countries—but not in others? The United States has had twelve systemic banking crises since 1840, while Canada has had none. The banking systems of Mexico and Brazil have not only been crisis prone but have provided miniscule amounts of credit to business enterprises and households. Analyzing the political and banking history of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil through several centuries, Fragile by Design demonstrates that chronic banking crises and scarce credit are not accidents. Calomiris and Haber combine political history and economics to examine how coalitions of politicians, bankers, and other interest groups form, why they endure, and how they generate policies that determine who gets to be a banker, who has access to credit, and who pays for bank bailouts and rescues. Fragile by Design is a revealing exploration of the ways that politics inevitably intrudes into bank regulation.
Download or read book How the Other Half Banks written by Mehrsa Baradaran and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States has two separate banking systems today—one serving the well-to-do and another exploiting everyone else. How the Other Half Banks contributes to the growing conversation on American inequality by highlighting one of its prime causes: unequal credit. Mehrsa Baradaran examines how a significant portion of the population, deserted by banks, is forced to wander through a Wild West of payday lenders and check-cashing services to cover emergency expenses and pay for necessities—all thanks to deregulation that began in the 1970s and continues decades later. “Baradaran argues persuasively that the banking industry, fattened on public subsidies (including too-big-to-fail bailouts), owes low-income families a better deal...How the Other Half Banks is well researched and clearly written...The bankers who fully understand the system are heavily invested in it. Books like this are written for the rest of us.” —Nancy Folbre, New York Times Book Review “How the Other Half Banks tells an important story, one in which we have allowed the profit motives of banks to trump the public interest.” —Lisa J. Servon, American Prospect
Download or read book Exile on Wall Street written by Mike Mayo and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-11-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insider points out the holes that still exist on Wall Street and in the banking system Exile on Wall Street is a gripping read for anyone with an interest in business and finance, U.S. capitalism, the future of banking, and the root causes of the financial meltdown. Award winning, veteran sell side Wall Street analyst Mike Mayo writes about one of the biggest financial and political issues of our time – the role of finance and banks in the US. He has worked at six Wall Street firms, analyzing banks and protesting against bad practices for two decades. In Exile on Wall Street, Mayo: Lays out practices that have diminished capitalism and the banking sector Shares his battle scars from calling truth to power at some of the largest banks in the world and how he survived challenging the status quo to be credited as one of the few who saw the crisis coming Blows the lid off the true inner workings of the big banks and shows the ways in which Wall Street is just as bad today as it was pre-crash. Analyzes the fallout stemming from the market crash, pointing out the numerous holes that still exist in the system, and offers practical solutions. While it provides an education, this is no textbook. It is also an invaluable resource for finance practitioners and citizens alike.
Download or read book The Little Virtues written by Natalia Ginzburg and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection of her finest and best-known short essays, Natalia Ginzburg explores both the mundane details and inescapable catastrophes of personal life with the grace and wit that have assured her rightful place in the pantheon of classic mid-century authors. Whether she writes of the loss of a friend, Cesare Pavese; or what is inexpugnable of World War II; or the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband lived in forced residence under Fascist rule; or the importance of silence in our society; or her vocation as a writer; or even a pair of worn-out shoes, Ginzburg brings to her reflections the wisdom of a survivor and the spare, wry, and poetically resonant style her readers have come to recognize. "A glowing light of modern Italian literature . . . Ginzburg's magic is the utter simplicity of her prose, suddenly illuminated by one word that makes a lightning streak of a plain phrase. . . . As direct and clean as if it were carved in stone, it yet speaks thoughts of the heart.' — The New York Times Book Review
Download or read book Dark Towers written by David Enrich and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER New York Times finance editor David Enrich's explosive exposé of the most scandalous bank in the world, revealing its shadowy ties to Donald Trump, Putin's Russia, and Nazi Germany “A jaw-dropping financial thriller” —Philadelphia Inquirer On a rainy Sunday in 2014, a senior executive at Deutsche Bank was found hanging in his London apartment. Bill Broeksmit had helped build the 150-year-old financial institution into a global colossus, and his sudden death was a mystery, made more so by the bank’s efforts to deter investigation. Broeksmit, it turned out, was a man who knew too much. In Dark Towers, award-winning journalist David Enrich reveals the truth about Deutsche Bank and its epic path of devastation. Tracing the bank’s history back to its propping up of a default-prone American developer in the 1880s, helping the Nazis build Auschwitz, and wooing Eastern Bloc authoritarians, he shows how in the 1990s, via a succession of hard-charging executives, Deutsche made a fateful decision to pursue Wall Street riches, often at the expense of ethics and the law. Soon, the bank was manipulating markets, violating international sanctions to aid terrorist regimes, scamming investors, defrauding regulators, and laundering money for Russian oligarchs. Ever desperate for an American foothold, Deutsche also started doing business with a self-promoting real estate magnate nearly every other bank in the world deemed too dangerous to touch: Donald Trump. Over the next twenty years, Deutsche executives loaned billions to Trump, the Kushner family, and an array of scandal-tarred clients, including convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Dark Towers is the never-before-told saga of how Deutsche Bank became the global face of financial recklessness and criminality—the corporate equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction. It is also the story of a man who was consumed by fear of what he’d seen at the bank—and his son’s obsessive search for the secrets he kept.
Download or read book The Sweet Hereafter written by Russell Banks and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Rich in imagery and the detail of small-town life and haunting in its portrayal of ordinary men and women struggling to understand loss. Under Mr. Banks's restrained craftsmanship, what begins as the story of senseless tragedy is transformed into an aspiring testament to hope and human resilience." — Atlanta Constitution In The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks tells a story that begins with a school bus accident. Using four different narrators, Banks creates a small-town morality play that addresses one of life's most agonizing questions: when the worst thing happens, who do you blame? Here is a stunning novel of "compelling moral suspense" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) from one of America's greatest storytellers.
Download or read book Billion Dollar Whale written by Bradley Hope and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Book of 2018 by the Financial Times and Fortune, this "thrilling" (Bill Gates) New York Times bestseller exposes how a "modern Gatsby" swindled over $5 billion with the aid of Goldman Sachs in "the heist of the century" (Axios). Now a #1 international bestseller, Billion Dollar Whale is "an epic tale of white-collar crime on a global scale" (Publishers Weekly), revealing how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest heists in history. In 2009, a chubby, mild-mannered graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business named Jho Low set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude--one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. Over a decade, Low, with the aid of Goldman Sachs and others, siphoned billions of dollars from an investment fund--right under the nose of global financial industry watchdogs. Low used the money to finance elections, purchase luxury real estate, throw champagne-drenched parties, and even to finance Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street. By early 2019, with his yacht and private jet reportedly seized by authorities and facing criminal charges in Malaysia and in the United States, Low had become an international fugitive, even as the U.S. Department of Justice continued its investigation. Billion Dollar Whale has joined the ranks of Liar's Poker, Den of Thieves, and Bad Blood as a classic harrowing parable of hubris and greed in the financial world.
Download or read book Tower of Basel written by Adam LeBor and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tower of Basel is the first investigative history of the world's most secretive global financial institution. Based on extensive archival research in Switzerland, Britain, and the United States, and in-depth interviews with key decision-makers -- including Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve; Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England; and former senior Bank for International Settlements managers and officials -- Tower of Basel tells the inside story of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS): the central bankers' own bank. Created by the governors of the Bank of England and the Reichsbank in 1930, and protected by an international treaty, the BIS and its assets are legally beyond the reach of any government or jurisdiction. The bank is untouchable. Swiss authorities have no jurisdiction over the bank or its premises. The BIS has just 140 customers but made tax-free profits of 1.17 billion in 2011-2012. Since its creation, the bank has been at the heart of global events but has often gone unnoticed. Under Thomas McKittrick, the bank's American president from 1940-1946, the BIS was open for business throughout the Second World War. The BIS accepted looted Nazi gold, conducted foreign exchange deals for the Reichsbank, and was used by both the Allies and the Axis powers as a secret contact point to keep the channels of international finance open. After 1945 the BIS -- still behind the scenes -- for decades provided the necessary technical and administrative support for the trans-European currency project, from the first attempts to harmonize exchange rates in the late 1940s to the launch of the Euro in 2002. It now stands at the center of efforts to build a new global financial and regulatory architecture, once again proving that it has the power to shape the financial rules of our world. Yet despite its pivotal role in the financial and political history of the last century and during the economic current crisis, the BIS has remained largely unknown -- until now.
Download or read book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man written by John Perkins and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2004-11-09 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perkins, a former chief economist at a Boston strategic-consulting firm, confesses he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business.
Download or read book Consider Phlebas written by Iain M. Banks and published by Orbit. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book in Iain M. Banks's seminal science fiction series, The Culture. Consider Phlebas introduces readers to the utopian conglomeration of human and alien races that explores the nature of war, morality, and the limitless bounds of mankind's imagination. The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction. The Culture Series Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata
Download or read book 40 Chances written by Howard G Buffett and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The son of legendary investor Warren Buffet relates how he set out to help nearly a billion individuals who lack basic food security through his passion of farming, in forty stories of lessons learned.
