The canal that shaped American finance
The construction of the Erie Canal is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in American history. But its most influential legacy is not the waterway itself, it is how it was paid for. Host...
29 Heinä 40min
The financial crash that created Britain’s first prime minister
When the South Sea Bubble burst in 1720, it wiped out fortunes and plunged Britain into its first great stock market crisis. The collapse of the South Sea Company, a government-backed scheme that prom...
15 Heinä 38min
South Sea Bubble: the shoemaker’s son who sparked Britain’s first financial crisis
In 1720, the South Sea Company was one of the most valuable businesses in Britain until a spectacular collapse in its publicly traded shares triggered the country’s first major stock market crisis. At...
8 Heinä 52min
The 1980s Garfield buyout that changed corporate finance
William E Simon was a bond trader-turned US cabinet secretary under President Richard Nixon. He was also abrasive, polarising and the “father of private equity”, according to Hettie O’Brien, author of...
1 Heinä 55min
The US dollar’s ‘immigrant’ origins
Today, when you think of a dollar, the US dollar probably comes to mind first. But that hasn’t always been the case. In this episode of The Story of Money, Brendan Greeley, the author of The Almighty ...
24 Kesä 47min
The financial scams that brought Albania to the brink of war
In the mid-1990s, Albania appeared to be a nation on the rise. Emerging from decades of isolation and communist rule, people poured their savings into investment schemes that promised extraordinary re...
17 Kesä 50min
When Nixon put America first and took the dollar off gold
Today, when people hear the name Richard Nixon, they probably think of Watergate. Few remember another one of his most controversial acts – his suspension of the dollar’s convertibility into gold. The...
10 Kesä 40min
