There is a large portion of America’s middle class that turns to investments as a means of retirement. A lot of people like to keep tabs on stock they have invested in, or receive as benefits. Some might receive shares of a stock as an incentive to take care of the company they work for insuring they and the company are profitable. Then one day the moment in the
Do we live on a bubble? Is it possible for the heavily indebted American economy to collapse and take all of us down in a free fall with it? Have the days of the dollar been counted? Is it really unimaginable that we will see the time of the Great Depression repeating itself? VPRO Backlight and Dutch national newspaper NRC Handelsblad present this ‘what if’ scenario. What if the
Like many in the 1980’s, Nick Leeson wanted to be rich and successful, but Nick Leeson was also a very strange man, he had an extraordinary ability to manipulate and deceive those around him. This is his story. It is also a story about those he deceived. They willingly entered into a dream he wove, lured by the prospect of vast sums of money and together they lost 830
Professor Niall Ferguson examines the origins of the pillars of the world’s financial system, and how behind every great historical phenomenon – empires and republics, wars and revolutions – there lies a financial secret. From Shylock’s pound of flesh to the loan sharks of Glasgow, from the ‘promises to pay’ on Babylonian clay tablets to the Medici banking system,
Bailouts, stimulus packages, debt piled upon debt…Where will it all end? How did we get into a situation where there has never been more material wealth & productivity and yet everyone is in debt to bankers? And now, all of a sudden, the bankers have no money and we the taxpayers, have to rescue them by going even further into debt! Money as debt II explores the baffling
Let’s face it, there’s always been plenty of extra work to be done at Christmas time. Be it late night shelf-stacking at your local mall, cramming this year’s must-have items into valuable shop space in an effort to fuel the ‘pile ‘em high, sell ‘em dear’ festive shopping frenzy, or doing the night shift down the sorting office to help out the postie, it’s a tradition for
On June 15, a Houston jury convicted Arthur Andersen — the 89-year-old accounting firm once known as the gold standard of integrity in auditing — for obstruction of justice in the government’s investigation of Enron, Andersen’s biggest client. With the demise of Andersen, the American business landscape was forever altered. But something else was altered as well
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Gordon Brown placed housing firmly at the top of the government’s agenda, unveiling plans to build three million homes by 2020 – possibly the biggest building programme in Britain for 30 years. But in this edition of Dispatches, reporter Andrew Gilligan investigates the private house builders charged with solving Britain’s chronic housing
The Federal Reserve, or the Fed as it is lovingly called, may be one of the most mysterious entities in modern American government. Created during Wilson’s presidency to protect the economy in times of financial turmoil, its real business remains to be discovered. During the Wilson presidency, the U.S. government sanctions the creation of the Federal Reserve.
