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
Why Richard Nixon torpedoed the global monetary system
A century ago, when depositors lost confidence in a bank, they’d rush to withdraw their cash. In 1971, US president Richard Milhous Nixon faced a similar dilemma. But his problem wasn’t ordinary citiz...
3 Jun 39min
The 18th-century woman who made saving possible for the poor
Priscilla Wakefield was a Quaker, writer and social reformer who believed financial security shouldn’t be reserved for the wealthy. Living in late 18th- and early 19th-century England, she founded the...
27 Mai 46min
The deal that put the dollar at the centre of the world
Take 730 delegates from 44 countries, plus another 2,000 or so hangers-on. House them in a remote, dilapidated hotel with holes in the roof and broken furniture. Deliver a train wagon filled with alco...
20 Mai 53min
Why money is the biggest shared hallucination in human history
What is money? And what can a small island in Micronesia teach us about how it works? On Yap, a remote island in the western Pacific, giant calcite “Rai” stones once functioned as currency, where owne...
13 Mai 44min
