-
The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One
- How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry
- Narrated by: Scotty Drake
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $24.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Bond King
- How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All
- By: Mary Childs
- Narrated by: Mary Childs
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before Bill Gross was known among investors as the Bond King, he was a gambler. In 1966, a fresh college grad, he went to Vegas armed with his net worth ($200) and a knack for counting cards. Ten thousand dollars and countless casino bans later, he was hooked, so he enrolled in business school. The Bond King is the story of how that whiz kid made American finance his casino.
-
-
Professional reader needed
- By Paige Turner on 03-20-22
By: Mary Childs
-
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
- By: Thomas Piketty, Arthur Goldhammer - translator
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 24 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories.
-
-
Data-Driven Books which Lie about Data are Useless
- By Ben on 11-02-19
By: Thomas Piketty, and others
-
Keeping at It
- The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government
- By: Paul A. Volcker, Christine Harper
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As chairman of the Federal Reserve (1979-1987), Paul Volcker slayed the inflation dragon that was consuming the American economy and restored the world's faith in central bankers. That extraordinary feat was just one pivotal episode in a decades-long career serving six presidents. Told with wit, humor, and down-to-earth erudition, the narrative of Volcker's career illuminates the changes that have taken place in American life, government, and the economy since World War II.
-
-
Engaging
- By Jean on 12-24-18
By: Paul A. Volcker, and others
-
The Lords of Easy Money
- How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy
- By: Christopher Leonard
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If you asked most people what forces led to today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve. For most of its history, the Fed has enjoyed the fawning adoration of the press. When the economy grew, it was credited to the Fed. When the economy imploded in 2008, the Fed got credit for rescuing us.
-
-
Nothing actionable.
- By Roger Martinez on 02-01-22
-
The Smartest Guys in the Room
- The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
- By: Bethany McLean
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 22 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The definitive volume on Enron's amazing rise and scandalous fall, from an award-winning team of Fortune investigative reporters.
-
-
Past is prologue
- By Amazon Customer on 12-11-10
By: Bethany McLean
-
American Kingpin
- The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road
- By: Nick Bilton
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2011, a 26-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine website hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything - drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons - free of the government's watchful eye. It wasn't long before the media got wind of the new website where anyone - not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers - could buy and sell contraband detection-free.
-
-
Simply...Amazing!
- By Casey on 09-20-17
By: Nick Bilton
-
The Bond King
- How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All
- By: Mary Childs
- Narrated by: Mary Childs
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before Bill Gross was known among investors as the Bond King, he was a gambler. In 1966, a fresh college grad, he went to Vegas armed with his net worth ($200) and a knack for counting cards. Ten thousand dollars and countless casino bans later, he was hooked, so he enrolled in business school. The Bond King is the story of how that whiz kid made American finance his casino.
-
-
Professional reader needed
- By Paige Turner on 03-20-22
By: Mary Childs
-
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
- By: Thomas Piketty, Arthur Goldhammer - translator
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 24 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories.
-
-
Data-Driven Books which Lie about Data are Useless
- By Ben on 11-02-19
By: Thomas Piketty, and others
-
Keeping at It
- The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government
- By: Paul A. Volcker, Christine Harper
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As chairman of the Federal Reserve (1979-1987), Paul Volcker slayed the inflation dragon that was consuming the American economy and restored the world's faith in central bankers. That extraordinary feat was just one pivotal episode in a decades-long career serving six presidents. Told with wit, humor, and down-to-earth erudition, the narrative of Volcker's career illuminates the changes that have taken place in American life, government, and the economy since World War II.
-
-
Engaging
- By Jean on 12-24-18
By: Paul A. Volcker, and others
-
The Lords of Easy Money
- How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy
- By: Christopher Leonard
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If you asked most people what forces led to today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no one would say the Federal Reserve. For most of its history, the Fed has enjoyed the fawning adoration of the press. When the economy grew, it was credited to the Fed. When the economy imploded in 2008, the Fed got credit for rescuing us.
-
-
Nothing actionable.
- By Roger Martinez on 02-01-22
-
The Smartest Guys in the Room
- The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
- By: Bethany McLean
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 22 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The definitive volume on Enron's amazing rise and scandalous fall, from an award-winning team of Fortune investigative reporters.
-
-
Past is prologue
- By Amazon Customer on 12-11-10
By: Bethany McLean
-
American Kingpin
- The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road
- By: Nick Bilton
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2011, a 26-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine website hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything - drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons - free of the government's watchful eye. It wasn't long before the media got wind of the new website where anyone - not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers - could buy and sell contraband detection-free.
-
-
Simply...Amazing!
- By Casey on 09-20-17
By: Nick Bilton
-
The Revolution That Wasn't
- GameStop, Reddit, and the Fleecing of Small Investors
- By: Spencer Jakab
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During one crazy week in January 2021, a motley crew of retail traders on Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets forum had seemingly done the impossible - they had brought some of the biggest, richest players on Wall Street to their knees. Their weapon was GameStop, a failing retailer whose shares briefly became the most traded security on the planet and the subject of intense media coverage. The Revolution That Wasn’t is the riveting story of how the meme stock squeeze unfolded, and of the real architects (and winners) of the GameStop rally.
-
-
Not a book but a journalist diary
- By srini katta on 02-16-22
By: Spencer Jakab
-
Liar's Poker
- RIsing Through the Wreckage on Wall Street
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Michael Lewis
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1986, before Michael Lewis became the best-selling author of The Big Short, Moneyball, and Flash Boys, he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street’s premier investment firms. During the next three years, Lewis rose from callow trainee to New York- and London-based bond salesman, raking in millions for the firm and cashing in on a modern-day gold rush. Liar’s Poker is the culmination of those heady, frenzied years - a behind-the-scenes look at a unique and turbulent time in American business.
-
-
Finally!
- By Anonymous User on 02-08-22
By: Michael Lewis
-
Gangsters of Capitalism
- Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire
- By: Jonathan M. Katz
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 14 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Smedley Butler was the most celebrated warfighter of his time. Best-selling books were written about him. Hollywood adored him. Wherever the flag went, “The Fighting Quaker” went - serving in nearly every major overseas conflict from the Spanish War of 1898 until the eve of World War II.
-
-
nostalgic melancholy sadness of yet another time
- By Robert Eaton Jr. on 01-29-22
By: Jonathan M. Katz
-
Den of Thieves
- By: James B. Stewart
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart shows for the first time how four of the biggest names on Wall Street - Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine - created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions - until a team of downtrodden detectives triumphed over some of America's most expensive lawyers to bring this powerful quartet to justice.
-
-
Awesome book
- By Lars Tackmann on 10-23-17
By: James B. Stewart
-
Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order
- Why Nations Succeed or Fail
- By: Ray Dalio
- Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb, Ray Dalio
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From legendary investor Ray Dalio, author of the number-one New York Times best seller Principles, who has spent half a century studying global economies and markets, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order examines history’s most turbulent economic and political periods to reveal why the times ahead will likely be radically different from those we’ve experienced in our lifetimes - and to offer practical advice on how to navigate them well.
-
-
Ray Dalio, Chinas New Minister of Propoganda
- By Dudley on 01-04-22
By: Ray Dalio
-
Economics in One Lesson
- By: Henry Hazlitt
- Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Called by H.L. Mencken, "one of the few economists in history who could really write," Henry Hazlitt achieved lasting fame for his brilliant but concise work. In it, he explains basic truths about economics and the economic fallacies responsible for unemployment, inflation, high taxes, and recession.
-
-
Should be required reading in every school.
- By William Michael Brauer on 12-29-16
By: Henry Hazlitt
-
The Dao of Capital
- Austrian Investing in a Distorted World
- By: Mark Spitznagel, Ron Paul
- Narrated by: Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Dao of Capital, hedge fund manager and tail-hedging pioneer Mark Spitznagel - with one of the top returns on capital of the financial crisis, as well as over a career - takes us on a gripping, circuitous journey from the Chicago trading pits, over the coniferous boreal forests and canonical strategists from Warring States China to Napoleonic Europe to burgeoning industrial America, to the great economic thinkers of late 19th century Austria.
-
-
Brilliant
- By Cully on 01-28-22
By: Mark Spitznagel, and others
-
The Theory of Money and Credit
- By: Ludwig von Mises
- Narrated by: Jim Vann
- Length: 18 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mises wrote this book for the ages, and it remains the most spirited, thorough, and scientifically rigorous treatise on money ever to appear. This classic treatise was the first really great integration of microeconomics and macroeconomics, and it remains the definitive book on the foundations of monetary theory. As Rothbard points out in his introduction to "the best book on money ever written," economists have yet to absorb all its lessons.
-
-
Interesting read
- By Todd Woollen on 07-20-19
By: Ludwig von Mises
-
The World for Sale
- Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources
- By: Javier Blas, Jack Farchy
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The World for Sale, two leading journalists lift the lid on one of the least scrutinised corners of the economy: the workings of the billionaire commodity traders who buy, hoard and sell the earth's resources. It is the story of how a handful of swashbuckling businessmen became indispensable cogs in global markets: enabling an enormous expansion in international trade and connecting resource-rich countries - no matter how corrupt or war-torn - with the world's financial centres.
-
-
Explains a lot!
- By jaga on 03-24-21
By: Javier Blas, and others
-
Lords of Finance
- The Bankers Who Broke the World
- By: Liaquat Ahamed
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 18 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person's or government's control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.
-
-
interesting insight into interwar period!
- By Toru on 11-27-09
By: Liaquat Ahamed
-
The Economic Weapon
- The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War
- By: Nicholas Mulder
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Economic sanctions dominate the landscape of world politics today. First developed in the early twentieth century as a way of exploiting the flows of globalization to defend liberal internationalism, their appeal is that they function as an alternative to war. This view, however, ignores the dark paradox at their core: designed to prevent war, economic sanctions are modeled on devastating techniques of warfare.
-
-
History of sanctions during the early 20th century
- By Mehdi Mollahasani on 03-05-22
By: Nicholas Mulder
-
Safe Haven
- Investing for Financial Storms
- By: Mark Spitznagel
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is a safe haven? What role should they play in an investment portfolio? Do we use them only to seek shelter until the passing of financial storms? Or are they something more? Contrary to everything we know from modern financial theory, can higher returns actually come as a result of lowering risk? In Safe Haven, hedge fund manager Mark Spitznagel - one of the top practitioners of safe haven investing and portfolio risk mitigation in the world - answers these questions and more.
-
-
blah
- By JXW on 09-21-21
By: Mark Spitznagel
Publisher's Summary
In this expert insider's account of the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s, William Black lays bare the strategies that corrupt CEOs and CFOs - in collusion with those who have regulatory oversight of their industries - use to defraud companies for their personal gain. Recounting the investigations he conducted as Director of Litigation for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, Black fully reveals how Charles Keating and hundreds of other S&L owners took advantage of a weak regulatory environment to perpetrate accounting fraud on a massive scale.
In the new afterword, he also authoritatively links the S&L crash to the business failures of 2008 and beyond, showing how CEOs then and now are using the same tactics to defeat regulatory restraints and commit the same types of destructive fraud.
Black drives home the larger point that control fraud is a major, ongoing threat in business that requires active, independent regulators to contain it. His book is a wake-up call for everyone who believes that market forces alone will keep companies and their owners honest.
More from the same
What listeners say about The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- -Bryan
- 02-25-16
A Must Get book
Absolutely amazing. You must get this book. Best book I've listened to in the last 4 years.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Philo
- 03-29-15
Bank frauds and their pet regulators, 1980s-2000s
Another title might be, "mud wrestling in a tangled snake pit over the privilege to steal other people's money." Yet another, "a bipartisan masterpiece of machinations and sleaze: following the bread crumbs, naming names, good and bad, and among the bad, the incredibly slippery." A few slither away with big money, and the final bill, in a familiar story, is handed to the taxpayer, with Congress hacks helping the perps, greatly enlarging that bill, and altogether making us all measurably poorer for life.
This may be a by-product of every go-go era, and go-go-eras have produced some great good for the public. This book focuses on the exploiters of such times, and I think we probably have another such prosperous phase of the cycle coming (so watch out).
Did Alan Greenspan really say he thought there shouldn't be fraud laws (as attributed here, as having been remarked to Brooksley Born?) If so, wow.
People plus econ theory can go to some very abstract, exotic places. That is, until one realizes: many hacks in the private and public sectors have their bread fundamentally buttered with information asymmetry: they actively embrace the view of a world of suckers and the suckered. The manipulators (and their house theory-propounders) make huge fortunes from it, want it, and must think the defrauded get what they deserve. Why should we slow down and take note of the fools who just haven't paid the information costs of being kingpins (and thus, in a sense, deserve their losses, and bargained for them)?
It is an interesting ethos and set of questions. Some version of it is also a central cash flow machine for a huge political and business elite, despite the protestations of many (hauling out the easy bumper sticker phrase) that this is merely the magical free market in operation. (Adam Smith knew better, castigating fraud and what is now called agency problems, but who really reads him? Might as well watch the adult cartoons on TV creatively cherry-picking his writings.) After all, the market finds its equilibrium at some point, and by then, the winners have unassailable amounts of winnings, free and clear and oh-so-cleverly stashed. The armies of well-greased syncophant experts see to that. Except that the defrauded in this latest round of this phenomenon (2008) are unprecedented numbers of the rest of us, especially via the system of government-(taxpayers)-as-insurance-for-the-macro-economy joined at the hip with continuing permissiveness of fraud. Watch it unfold again now: now whenever everybody's fear of macro-disaster subsides, the next echo of this familiar financing bubble will take off. Since interest rates can't and won't be lowered soon, the answer (proposed by many) to juice up the economy will be sharp financial deregulation. And again, as in this book, the downsizing of things like bank examiner budgets. The regulated businesses will again be touted by regulators as "our clients." And surprise, into many cronies' pockets, vast amounts of cash will flow. Everybody will feel (at least potentially) rich and studly for a little while, then comes the inevitable denouement. (I can't assume from this small sample that the cycles will continue to shorten and steepen. But it concerns me.)
And it feeds back into both major parties' coffers, and some very big political names, keeping the dance going longer, for bigger looting and losses, as this book shows.
This book spends most of its time in a blow-by-blow of the '80s S&L affair in which this author was a prime participant from the government enforcement side. (This is not the entire history: the inquisitive reader can look for more background as to why S&Ls were in the ditch they were, for which the answer SEEMED to some, and some in good faith, to deregulate, to give some slack to the floundering industry, to climb out of its ditch. As usual, bipartisan fingerprints were all over the mess from way back. That larger history isn't quite all here, and isn't the apparent intention of this book, which is much more about the direct trench warfare.)
People with an interest in this subject and its players will find it pretty absorbing (some will find it maddening, either at the author and those he praises, or those he pillories, or maybe some mix thereof). Having shown the most connected '80s crooks dispatched finally, after a titanic struggle finally winding up in climactic hearing scenes in Congress, it picks up speed to tie together a bigger picture historically and economically (from the author's particular viewpoint) in about the last one-fifth of the book. He is quite critical of public choice theory and other conservative concepts that, I think, can be very meaningful and important. But I don't get the sense of a blinkered ideologue.
It was my honor to meet one of this book's heroes, Edwin Gray, later Bank Board Chairman, informally, in the early Reagan era. He infuriated a lot of well-connected people by actually doing his job, even after severe pressure was brought by many powerful and connected people. We can compare this civil servant, ungainly character traits and all, with the party hack later put into the regulators' ranks who, per the author, could not shut up about the fancy tricked-out interior and sound system of arch-crook-banker Charles Keating's jet. The latter sort of naive young apparatchiks were intentionally salted into the ranks of the regulators, by those for whom government is always and everywhere nothing but "the problem." Why not, in that vein, hire cops who are in awe of Pablo Escobar's car collection?
And yet, next to the magnitude of crony cash flows these days, and the bitter rhetoric and broken consensus-reaching process, one can feel nostalgic for Reagan and his ability to work across the political spectrum and often lead in very good and productive directions, too. He was not simply a one-trick pony, as many of the cartoonish supposed imitators are now. But in the shadow of any and every system, some strange critters can grow.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Olly Buxton
- 07-05-20
outrageous story
This is a must-read landmark book about a landmark scandal whose reverberations still ring around US the securities industry.
It is unashamedly a regulator's-eye view, focussed on standing up to and rooting out control frauds, so rather skips over how these "control frauds" got going or came about in the first place, which is a pity. Non-American readers might find it assumes a bit too much knowledge therefore.
There's a section at the end with red flags and lessons (not) learned which is particularly valuable.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Robert Barwick
- 05-21-19
Should be compulsory study for all regulators!
William Black has done the world a huge favour in dissecting control fraud. Everything he details about the American S&L fraud in the 1980s has been repeated in Australian banks in the last two decades. This book proves the regulators have no excuse - they only don't find fraud because they are complicit in it.