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 Jul 40min
The trader who made $100mn from the 1929 crash — only to lose it all
Jesse Livermore was a legendary trader who made and lost several fortunes in the early 20th century, most famously by shorting the Wall Street crash of 1929. His early life was immortalised in the rom...
22 Jul 54min
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 Jul 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 Jul 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 Jul 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 Jun 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 Jun 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 Jun 40min
