In the summer of 1944, as Allied armies fought through Normandy, 44 nations gathered at a run-down hotel in New Hampshire to discuss the economic future of the world. What followed was the only ever formal attempt to reorder the international monetary system; one that seemed for a time successful until it collapsed unmourned in 1971. Together with the author Ed Conway, we look at the summit itself, the giant figures who dominated it (John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White), what it concluded and why, ultimately, it failed.Produced by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Ed Conway.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
On 21 November 1974, an obscure backbench MP, John Stonehouse, went for a swim off Miami Beach and disappeared. So began an extraordinary tale of banking fraud, money laundering, spying and identity theft, which unravelled over the following month, ending in Stonehouse's exposure and arrest and making him one of the most famous MPs in the world. Together with the author Philip Augar, we look at Stonehouse's political life and the extraordinary financial dealings that led to his disappearance.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Philip Augar.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Employees of a High Street bank rip off its customers for years. The bank refuses to admit that anything illegal happened. Yet when the fraud is finally exposed, it not only gets to decide what compensation to pay; it gets to investigate its own wrongdoing. Sound strange? We talk to the Ian Fraser about Lloyds Bank and the HBOS Reading Affair, its parallels with the Post Office scandal and the world's longest in-house investigation, under retired Judge Dame Linda Dobbs.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Ian Fraser.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. These materials built the world we live in, and they will transform our future. Neil and Jonathan talk to writer and broadcaster Ed Conway about raw materials that drive our economies, who controls them, and how that affects Britain's place in the worldPresented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Ed Conway.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.Additional production by Ewan Cameron. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Coal once powered the Industrial Revolution and made Britain the richest country on earth. Now with the closure of the country's last coal-fired power station, it will cease to play any meaningful part in the economic life of the nation. Aside from welcoming a cleaner, greener future, what are we to make of this momentous departure? Together with Ewan Gibbs from Glasgow University, Neil and Jonathan look at the epic decline and fall of King Coal. Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Ewan Gibbs.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
That's how the public increasingly sees today's managerial elite. Bosses enjoy vast rewards without seeming to be accountable for their decisions - at least the ones that go wrong. The economist (and old friend of Altif) Dan Davies has an answer: they've created what he calls an "unaccountability sink" which is delivering terrible business outcomes. Neil and Jonathan investigate.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Dan Davies.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
One of Britain's best known bond fund managers, and also founder of the "Bond Vigilante" blog, Jim Leaviss is leaving the City after 32 years to train as an art historian. Neil and Jonathan caught up with him to look back on his City career, the huge bull market in bonds of recent decades, and the threats that lie in store from international instability, political turmoil and deteriorating public finances across the Western world. Presented by Neil Collins and Jonathan Ford.With Jim Leaviss.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
When banks were found to have manipulated the Libor rate during the financial crisis, they paid a whopping $8bn in fines but only a few junior traders went to prison. In a joint episode with Law & Disorder podcast, we look at the recently appealed cases of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palumbo, and ask whether justice has been served.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Nicholas Mostyn and Helena Kennedy.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
One of the more striking crime statistics is that burglary is down 90% in England and Wales since the 1990s. That doesn't reflect more upright behaviour. Nope, it's just that villains are increasingly moving their operations online. We talk to author Geoff White about how Silicon Valley is helping the bad guys go digital by making it easier for them not only to con people and rob, but also to launder their digital winnings onlinePresented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Geoff White.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
How did housing in Britain go from somewhere to live to being everyone's favourite financial asset? In the second of our two part series, we look at housing policy since 1970; and ask whether there has ever been a coherent approach. Also is there a natural level of home ownership and should we be encouraging everyone to buy? With Cambridge University housing expert Peter Williams.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Peter Williams.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
How did housing in Britain go from somewhere to live to everyone's favourite financial asset? In the first of a two part series, we look at the mortgage market since 1970; and ask whether the high prices and low supply we endure today are a financial phenomenon. With former building societies supremo Mark Boleat.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Mark Boleat.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
When Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, it was an online bookshop. Now its tentacles are everywhere: it's a marketplace for third party goods from around the world, a huge cloud computing business and America's largest parcel delivery group. But is this a good thing or a bad one? We talk to Dana Mattioli of the Wall Street Journal about whether Amazon is the consumer''s friend or a monopolist to rank with Rockefeller's Standard Oil.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Dana Mattioli.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podcast.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The economist Michael Jensen, who died this month, did as much as any single thinker to shape modern financial capitalism. To his detractors, he was the High Priest of Greed who justified stratospheric CEO pay and predatory private equity. His admirers believe he revived Anglo Saxon capitalism. We discuss his ideas and legacy with the independent researcher and private equity expert Peter Morris. Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Peter Morris.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podcast.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
A natural monopoly delivering an essential service, Thames Water was privatised in 1989 with no debt. Now it's on its knees, crushed by more than £15bn of borrowings. Neil and Jonathan talk to Feargal Sharkey about what this says about Mrs Thatcher's most controversial privatisation, whether incentive regulation works, and whether we should just scrap the whole private structure and start again.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Feargal Sharkey.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
GEC was a British manufacturing titan; a cash-rich producer of everything from washing machines to railway trains. Then in a few years, it rebranded and restructured, shedding most of the old industrial bits to focus on telecoms. The result? By 2005, shiny new Marconi was no more. In the second of our Fallen Angel series, we talk to industrial historian Nick Comfort about one of the most abrupt collapses in UK corporate history and its heavy industrial cost Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Nicholas Comfort.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
For decades ICI was Britain's largest manufacturing company - a giant fixed point around which the rest of industry orbited. Then, in little more than a decade, it split itself up, sold many of its traditional businesses, and ran up big debts buying fancy but not very profitable fragrance companies. In 2006, the end came when it sold itself to a Dutch company and disappeared. We talk to writer and industrial commentator Nick Comfort about the fall of ICI and what it says about the way the UK economy has been run.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Nicholas Comfort.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Remember Pets.com? Or Ask Jeeves? The dot com bubble of 25 years ago might have been a seismic event in markets. But was it just a collective moment of madness, or a deeper transformational moment? Or both? As AI stocks shoot towards the stratosphere, we talk to internet historian Brian McCullough, host of the Techmeme Ride Home podcast, about what we can learn from the last great tech bubble.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Brian McCullough.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
One of Britain's better-known economic forecasters, Roger Bootle, set up his consultancy Capital Economics 25 years ago. He made his name predicting the "death of inflation" on which he wrote an influential book in the 1990s. We discuss the importance of economic history, favourite writers, monetarism, bright spots in the world economy, and Britain's many problems with growth.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Philip Augar.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In the second of our series on Privatisation and Popular Capitalism, we look at the biggest and riskiest privatisation of all - the 1987 sale of the UK's 31% stake in BP. How the Chancellor Nigel Lawson gambled that the markets were good for a quick £7bn. Prepare for the world's shortest pricing meeting, diplomatic rows with Kuwaitis and lots of long faced underwriters. And our guest Philip Augar delivers the verdict: was it a disaster narrowly averted or a triumph for the new City of London?Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Philip Augar.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Along with the sale of council houses, privatisation was a signature theme of Mrs Thatcher's government. Its aim was not just more efficient businesses, but a "share owning democracy" that would purge Britain of the "corrosive effect of socialism". With its "Tell Sid" campaign, British Gas was the high water mark of privatisation. Neil and Jonathan talk to author Philip Augar about "stagging", Cedric the Pig and how privatisation changed the City. Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Philip Augar.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In association with BRIEFCASE.NEWS Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.