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Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > History of specific institutions
In "Right of the Dial," Alec Foege explores how the mammoth
media conglomerate Clear Channel Communications evolved from a
local radio broadcasting operation, founded in 1972, into one of
the biggest, most profitable, and most polarizing corporations in
the country. During its heyday, critics accused Clear Channel, the
fourth-largest media company in the United States and the nation's
largest owner of radio stations, of ruining American pop culture
and cited it as a symbol of the evils of media monopolization,
while fans hailed it as a business dynamo, a beacon of unfettered
capitalism.What's undeniable is that as the owner at one point of
more than 1,200 radio stations, 130 major concert venues and
promoters, 770,000 billboards, and 41 television stations, Clear
Channel dominated the entertainment world in ways that MTV and
Disney could only dream of. But in the fall of 2006, after years of
public criticism and flattening stock prices, Goliath finally
tumbled--Clear Channel Communications, Inc., spun off its
entertainment division and plotted to sell off one-third of its
radio stations and all of its television concerns, and to transfer
ownership of the rest of its holdings to a consortium of private
equity firms. The move signaled the end of an era in media
consolidation, and in "Right of the Dial," Foege takes stock of the
company's successes and abuses, showing the manner in which Clear
Channel reshaped America's cultural and corporate landscape along
the way.
This is the story of the greatest might-have-been in the history of
the fast food business. How did a company that began almost by
accident become the innovation leader by 1960? What caused a
decade-long slide that began right at the moment of their greatest
success? Understanding begins with studying the experiences that
forged Burger Chef and its leaders, and then learning from the
mistakes corporations can make when they replace innovation and
entrepreneurship with process and control-a lesson as important
today as it was a half-century ago.
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book
may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages,
poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the
original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We
believe this work is culturally important, and despite the
imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of
our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works
worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in
the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
With an updated Afterword by the author
This is the epic saga of the American automobile industry's rise
and demise, a compelling story of hubris, missed opportunities, and
self-inflicted wounds that culminates with the president of the
United States ushering two of Detroit's Big Three car
companies--once proud symbols of prosperity--through bankruptcy.
With unprecedented access, Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Ingrassia
takes us from factory floors to small-town dealerships to Detroit's
boardrooms to the White House. Ingrassia answers the big questions:
Was Detroit's self-destruction inevitable? What were the key
turning points? Why did Japanese automakers manage American workers
better than the American companies themselves did? Complete with a
new Afterword providing fresh insights into the continuing upheaval
in the auto industry--the travails of Toyota, the revolving-door
management and IPO at General Motors, the unexpected progress at
Chrysler, and the Obama administration's stake in Detroit's
recovery--"Crash Course" addresses a critical question: America
bailed out GM, but who will bail out America?
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book
may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages,
poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the
original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We
believe this work is culturally important, and despite the
imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of
our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works
worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in
the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
One of the biggest questions of the financial crisis has not been
answered until now. What happened at Lehman Brothers and why was it
allowed to fail, with aftershocks that rocked the global economy?
In this news-making, often astonishing book, a former Lehman
Brothers Vice President gives us the straight answers--right from
the belly of the beast.
In "A Colossal Failure of Common Sense," Larry McDonald, a Wall
Street insider, reveals, the culture and unspoken rules of the game
like no book has ever done. The book is couched in the very human
story of Larry McDonald's Horatio Alger-like rise from a
Massachusetts "gateway to nowhere" housing project to the New York
headquarters of Lehman Brothers, home of one of the world's
toughest trading floors.
We get a close-up view of the participants in the Lehman collapse,
especially those who saw it coming with a helpless, angry
certainty. We meet the Brahmins at the top, whose reckless,
pedal-to-the-floor addiction to growth finally demolished the
nation's oldest investment bank. The Wall Street we encounter here
is a ruthless place, where brilliance, arrogance, ambition, greed,
capacity for relentless toil, and other human traits combine in a
potent mix that sometimes fuels prosperity but occasionally
destroys it.
The full significance of the dissolution of Lehman Brothers remains
to be measured. But this much is certain: it was a devastating blow
to America's--and the world's--financial system. And it need not
have happened. This is the story of why it did.
"From the Hardcover edition."
If Rupert Murdoch isn't making headlines, he's busy buying the
media outlets that generate the headlines. His News Corp.
holdings--from the" New York Post," Fox News, and most recently
"The Wall Street Journal," to name just a few--are vast, and his
power is unrivaled. So what makes a man like this tick? Michael
Wolff gives us the definitive answer in "The Man Who Owns the
News."
With unprecedented access to Rupert Murdoch himself, and his
associates and family, Wolff chronicles the astonishing growth of
Murdoch's $70 billion media kingdom. In intimate detail, he probes
the Murdoch family dynasty, from the battles that have threatened
to destroy it to the reconciliations that seem to only make it
stronger. Drawing upon hundreds of hours of interviews, he offers
accounts of the Dow Jones takeover as well as plays for Yahoo! and
"Newsday" as they've never been revealed before.
Written in the irresistible stye that only an award-winning
columnist for "Vanity Fair" can deliver, "The Man Who Owns the
News" offers an exclusive glimpse into a man who wields
extraordinary power and influence in the media on a worldwide
scale--and whose family is being groomed to carry his legacy into
the future.
"From the Hardcover edition."
On March 5, 2008, at 10:15 A.M., a hedge fund manager in Florida
wrote a post on his investing advice Web site that included a
startling statement about Bear Stearns & Co., the nation's
fifth-largest investment bank: "In my book, they are insolvent."
This seemed a bold and risky statement. Bear Stearns was about to
announce profits of $115 million for the first quarter of 2008, had
$17.3 billion in cash on hand, and, as the company incessantly
boasted, had been a colossally profitable enterprise in the
eighty-five years since its founding.
Ten days later, Bear Stearns no longer existed, and the calamitous
financial meltdown of 2008 had begun.
How this happened - and why - is the subject of William D. Cohan's
superb and shocking narrative that chronicles the fall of Bear
Stearns and the end of the Second Gilded Age on Wall Street. Bear
Stearns serves as the Rosetta Stone to explain how a combination of
risky bets, corporate political infighting, lax government
regulations and truly bad decision-making wrought havoc on the
world financial system.
Cohan's minute-by-minute account of those ten days in March makes
for breathless reading, as the bankers at Bear Stearns struggled to
contain the cascading series of events that would doom the firm,
and as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, New York Federal Reserve
Bank President Tim Geithner, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke began to
realize the dire consequences for the world economy should the
company go bankrupt.
But HOUSE OF CARDS does more than recount the incredible panic of
the first stages of the financial meltdown. William D. Cohan
beautifully demonstrates" why" the seemingly invincible Wall Street
money machine came crashing down. He chronicles the swashbuckling
corporate culture of Bear Stearns, the strangely crucial role
competitive bridge played in the company's fortunes, the brutal
internecine battles for power, and the deadly combination of greed
and inattention that helps to explain why the company's leaders
ignored the danger lurking in Bear's huge positions in
mortgage-backed securities.
The author deftly portrays larger-than-life personalities like Ace
Greenberg, Bear Stearns' miserly, take-no-prisoners chairman whose
memos about re-using paper clips were legendary throughout Wall
Street; his profane, colorful rival and eventual heir Jimmy Cayne,
whose world-champion-level bridge skills were a lever in his
corporate rise and became a symbol of the reasons for the firm's
demise; and Jamie Dimon, the blunt-talking CEO of JPMorgan Chase,
who won the astonishing endgame of the saga (the Bear Stearns
headquarters alone were worth more than JP Morgan paid for the
whole company).
Cohan's explanation of seemingly arcane subjects like credit
default swaps and fixed- income securities is masterful and crystal
clear, but it is the high-end dish and powerful narrative drive
that makes HOUSE OF CARDS an irresistible read on a par with
classics such as LIAR'S POKER and BARBARIANS AT THE GATE.
Written with the novelistic verve and insider knowledge that made
THE LAST TYCOONS a bestseller and a prize-winner, HOUSE OF CARDS is
a chilling cautionary tale about greed, arrogance, and stupidity in
the financial world, and the consequences for all of us.
2009 Reprint of the original 1949 edition. Paperback. 149pp.
William Delbert Gann (6 June, 1878 - 14 June, 1955) also known as
W. D. Gann, was a finance trader who developed the technical
analysis tool known as Gann angles. Gann market forecasting methods
are based on geometry, astrology, and ancient mathematics. Opinions
are sharply divided on the value and relevance of his work. Gann
wrote a number of books on trading, the classic text being 45 Years
in Wall Street. Gann has developed a very faithful group of
followers and adherents.
In this survey of international economic thought, Michael Hudson
rewrites the history of trade, development and debt theorizing. He
shows that mainstream free-trade surveys are censorial in excluding
the protectionist logic that has guided the trade policy of Europe
and the United States, especially by leaving out discussion of the
transfer problem and payment of international debts. He points out
that most economists throughout history have focused as much on war
financing as on trade and development. Free-trade ideology and
IMF-style financial austerity under today's rules, rather than
benefiting all parties and maximizing welfare, leave "client"
nations severely indebted. By excluding dynamics that used to be
central to trade theory such as emigration and technology transfer,
today's global production and financial policies tend to
concentrate economic and political power in the hands of dominant
nations. Prof. Michael Hudson (Economics Department, University of
Missouri, Kansas City) is a frequent contributor to The Financial
Times, Counterpunch, and Global Research.
The pharmaceutical revolution that gathered pace in the 1930s
delivered a plethora of almost magical new drugs such as
penicillin, streptomycin, cortisone, and the birth control pill.
This revolution grew from academic-business relationships in five
countries: USA, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, and France.
Many other countries tried and failed to replicate this success,
yet a handful of Scandinavia companies made important breakthroughs
in a narrow band of specialities. This is the story of how one
Norwegian company- Nyegaard & Co. -achieved international
success from the 1970s onwards with a breakthrough product
facilitating X-ray pictures of the soft tissues of the body. The
company succeeded by harnessing research skills and creating
scientific and business alliances abroad, building its own momentum
step by step: the corporation as entrepreneur. It thereby broke
with the conventional way a national medical ecosystem facilitated
the crucial scientific progress. This is a story both of personal
initiatives and great organizational transformations in several
stages. In the 1950s, Nyegaard & Co. was a small hierarchical
home market-oriented generics company. By the end of the 1990s, it
had developed into a fairly large and multinational hierarchical
company, preoccupied as much with shareholder value as scientific
progress. It has also become a company that no longer had the same
ability to innovate as before and therefore became merged into
another one.
A long-overdue expose of the astonishing yet shadowy power wielded
by the world's largest law firms. Though not a household name,
Jones Day is well known in the halls of power, and serves as a
powerful encapsulation of the changes that have swept the legal
profession in recent decades. Founded in the US in 1893, it has
become one of the world's largest law firms, a global juggernaut
with deep ties to corporate interests and conservative politics. A
key player in the legal battles surrounding the Trump
administration, Jones Day has also for decades represented Big
Tobacco, defended opioid manufacturers, and worked tirelessly to
minimise the sexual-abuse scandals of the Catholic Church. Like
many of its peers, it has fought time and again for those who want
nothing more than to act without constraint or scrutiny - including
the Russian oligarchs as they have sought to expand
internationally. In this gripping and revealing new work of
narrative nonfiction, New York Times Business Investigations Editor
and bestselling author David Enrich at last tells the story of 'Big
Law' and the nearly unchecked influence these firms wield to shield
the wealthy and powerful - and bury their secrets.
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