Shredded

Shredded PDF Author: Ian Fraser
Publisher: Birlinn
ISBN: 0857906232
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
This is the definitive account of the Royal Bank of Scotland scandal. For a few brief months in 2007 and 2009, the Royal Bank of Scotland was the largest bank in the world. Then the Edinburgh-based giant - having rapidly grown its footprint to 55 countries and stretched its assets to £2.4 trillion under its hubristic and delinquent former boss Fred Goodwin - crashed to earth. In Shredded, Ian Fraser explores the series of cataclysmic misjudgments, the toxic internal culture and the 'light touch' regulatory regime that gave rise to RBS/NatWest's near-collapse. He also considers why it became the most expensive bank in the world to bail out and why a culture of impunity was allowed to develop in the banking sector. This new edition brings the story up to date, chronicling the string of scandals that have come to light since taxpayers rescued RBS and concluding with an evaluation of the attempts of the bank's post-crisis chief executives, Stephen Hester and Ross McEwan, to dismantle Goodwin's disastrous legacy and restore the damaged institutions to health. 'A gripping account - RBS was a rogue business, operating in what had become a rogue industry, with the connivance of government. Read it and weep' – Martin Woolf, Financial Times

Shredded

Shredded PDF Author: Ian Fraser
Publisher: Birlinn
ISBN: 0857906232
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 498

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the definitive account of the Royal Bank of Scotland scandal. For a few brief months in 2007 and 2009, the Royal Bank of Scotland was the largest bank in the world. Then the Edinburgh-based giant - having rapidly grown its footprint to 55 countries and stretched its assets to £2.4 trillion under its hubristic and delinquent former boss Fred Goodwin - crashed to earth. In Shredded, Ian Fraser explores the series of cataclysmic misjudgments, the toxic internal culture and the 'light touch' regulatory regime that gave rise to RBS/NatWest's near-collapse. He also considers why it became the most expensive bank in the world to bail out and why a culture of impunity was allowed to develop in the banking sector. This new edition brings the story up to date, chronicling the string of scandals that have come to light since taxpayers rescued RBS and concluding with an evaluation of the attempts of the bank's post-crisis chief executives, Stephen Hester and Ross McEwan, to dismantle Goodwin's disastrous legacy and restore the damaged institutions to health. 'A gripping account - RBS was a rogue business, operating in what had become a rogue industry, with the connivance of government. Read it and weep' – Martin Woolf, Financial Times

The Rise and Fall of the City of Money

The Rise and Fall of the City of Money PDF Author: Ray Perman
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
ISBN: 178885229X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
It started and ended with a financial catastrophe. The Darien disaster of 1700 drove Scotland into union with England, but spawned the institutions which transformed Edinburgh into a global financial centre. The crash of 2008 wrecked the city's two largest and oldest banks – and its reputation. In the three intervening centuries, Edinburgh became a hothouse of financial innovation, prudent banking, reliable insurance and smart investing. The face of the city changed too as money transformed it from medieval squalor to Georgian elegance. This is the story, not just of the institutions which were respected worldwide, but of the personalities too, such as the two hard-drinking Presbyterian ministers who founded the first actuarially-based pension fund; Sir Walter Scott, who faced financial ruin, but wrote his way out of it; the men who financed American railways and eastern rubber plantations with Scottish money; and Fred Goodwin, notorious CEO of RBS, who took the bank to be the biggest in the world, but crashed and burned in 2008.

Mystery of Banking, The

Mystery of Banking, The PDF Author: Murray Newton Rothbard
Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute
ISBN: 1610163842
Category : Banks and banking
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description


Free Banking in Britain

Free Banking in Britain PDF Author: Lawrence Henry White
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780255363754
Category : Banks and banking
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Free banking, generically speaking, denotes a monetary system without a central bank, under which the issuing of currency is left to private banks. This book explores how this could work in practice by examining how this has worked historically, specifically in the United Kingdom in the early 19th century. After building a theory of free banking, its central chapters explore the history of Scotlands experience of free banking and the contemporary policy debate over the question of whether Parliament should allow free banking in England. The final chapters bring the debate forward and examine how free banking could work in modern times. The result is a significantly revised and update edition of a book about privately issued currency.

The Story of the Commercial Bank of Scotland, Limited, During Its Hundred Years, from 1810-1910

The Story of the Commercial Bank of Scotland, Limited, During Its Hundred Years, from 1810-1910 PDF Author: James Lawson Anderson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Banks and banking
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description


Experience of Free Banking

Experience of Free Banking PDF Author: Kevin Dowd
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134945604
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
First Published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Making It Happen

Making It Happen PDF Author: Iain Martin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471113566
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 451

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Book Description
When RBS collapsed and had to be bailed out by the taxpayer in the financial crisis of October 2008 it played a leading role in tipping Britain into its deepest economic downturn in seven decades. The economy shrank, bank lending froze, hundreds of thousands lost their jobs, living standards are still falling and Britons will be paying higher taxes for decades to pay the clean-up bill. How on earth had a small Scottish bank grown so quickly to become a global financial giant that could do such immense damage when it collapsed? At the centre of the story was Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive known as "Fred the Shred" who terrorised some of his staff and beguiled others. Not a banker by training, he nonetheless was given control of RBS and set about trying to make it one of the biggest brands in the world. It was said confidently that computerisation and new banking products had made the world safer. Only they hadn't... Based on more than 80 interviews and with access to diaries and papers kept by those at the heart of the meltdown, this is the definitive account of the RBS disaster, a disaster which still casts such a shadow over our economy. In Making It Happen, senior executives, board members, Treasury insiders and regulators reveal how the bank's mania for expansion led it to take enormous risks its leaders didn't understand. From the birth of the Royal Bank in 18th century Scotland, to the manic expansion under Fred Goodwin in the middle of a mad boom and culminating in the epoch-defining collapse, Making It Happen is the full, extraordinary story.

Financial Stability without Central Banks

Financial Stability without Central Banks PDF Author: George Selgin
Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
ISBN: 0255367538
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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Book Description
George Selgin is one of the world's foremost monetary historians. In this book, based on the 2016 Hayek Memorial Lecture, he shows how a system of private banks without a central bank can bring about financial stability through self-regulation. If one bank stretches credit too far, it will be reined in by the others before the system as a whole gets out of control. The banks have a strong incentive to ensure an orderly resolution if a particular bank is facing insolvency or illiquidity. Selgin draws on evidence from the era of 'free banking' in Scotland and Canada. These arrangements enjoyed greater financial stability, with fewer banking crises, than the English system with its central bank and the US model with its faulty government regulation. The creation of the Federal Reserve appears to have increased the frequency of financial crises. The book also includes commentaries by Kevin Dowd and Mathieu Bédard. Dowd asks whether free-banking systems should be underpinned by a gold standard, which he regards as a tried-and-tested institution at the heart of their success. Bédard challenges the assumption that the banking sector is inherently unstable and therefore requires state intervention. He argues that increases in government control have made the banking system more prone to crisis.

Web of Debt

Web of Debt PDF Author: Ellen Hodgson Brown
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780983330851
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
"Web of Debt" unravels deceptions about the money system and presents a crystal-clear picture of the upcoming financial abyss. The text also explores a workable alternative, one that was tested in colonial America and is grounded in the best of American economic thought, including the writings of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln.

Fragile by Design

Fragile by Design PDF Author: Charles W. Calomiris
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168350
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
Why stable banking systems are so rare Why are banking systems unstable in so many countries—but not in others? The United States has had twelve systemic banking crises since 1840, while Canada has had none. The banking systems of Mexico and Brazil have not only been crisis prone but have provided miniscule amounts of credit to business enterprises and households. Analyzing the political and banking history of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil through several centuries, Fragile by Design demonstrates that chronic banking crises and scarce credit are not accidents. Calomiris and Haber combine political history and economics to examine how coalitions of politicians, bankers, and other interest groups form, why they endure, and how they generate policies that determine who gets to be a banker, who has access to credit, and who pays for bank bailouts and rescues. Fragile by Design is a revealing exploration of the ways that politics inevitably intrudes into bank regulation.