The End of Alchemy cover art

The End of Alchemy

Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy

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The End of Alchemy

By: Mervyn King
Narrated by: Roger Davis
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About this listen

The past 20 years saw unprecedented growth and stability followed by the worst financial crisis the industrialised world has ever witnessed.

In the space of little more than a year, what had been seen as the age of wisdom was viewed as the age of foolishness. Almost overnight, belief turned into incredulity.

Most accounts of the recent crisis focus on the symptoms and not the underlying causes of what went wrong. But those events, vivid though they remain in our memories, comprised only the latest in a long series of financial crises since our present system of commerce became the cornerstone of modern capitalism.

Alchemy explains why, ultimately, this was and remains a crisis not of banking - even if we need to reform the banking system - nor of policy-making - even if mistakes were made - but of ideas.

In this refreshing and vitally important book, former governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King - an actor in this drama - proposes revolutionary new concepts to answer the central question: are money and banking a form of alchemy, or are they the Achilles heel of a modern capitalist economy?

©2016 Mervyn King (P)2016 Little Brown Book Group Economics Banking Capitalism Taxation Thought-Provoking Socialism Global Financial Crisis Great Recession Money US Economy Government Export

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Obviously too cool for school because despite an informative discussion of banking there is almost no anecdotes from his time in banking to add a bit of colour to the at times colourless theories. Worth a listen because he is obviously an expert

Nearly no anecdotal insight

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Really interested in the subject matter but halfway through struggling with the sleep-inducing narration. I have the physical book as well so I'll turn to that.

Interesting subject but dull delivery

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What made the experience of listening to The End of Alchemy the most enjoyable?

I had anticipated one book and got another. Anticipating a dryer tome sanitised of harsh truths, however, I received a compelling easy read with some unvarnished heavy opinions, given by a man whose opinions can be codified closer to the real world than most. Highly recommended.

Suprised by frankness

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I'd highly recommend to all those interested in modern finance and economics. written in clear easy format

excellent!

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King tells the story of money from our earliest records of it and why it came about, how it has progressed in history, and where we are today. He explains how it has necessarily become the domain of banks and attempts to solve some of the problems by creating a metric called 'alchemy', which would in part be dependent on a regulator to make specific, and argues why he believes it's a good measure of bank solvency in a crisis. Overall a very good story, pointing out very obvious problems in our world's monetary policy, but importantly offering possible solutions as well.

King tells the story of Mr Money

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This is a personal review as I feel it was very insightful and did in most areas breakdown the complex nature of the banking system very well, although I can't deny I got lost a few times with terminology. This book is an eye opener and one which I encourage people to listen to if we are ever going to question the future economy and banking infrastructure

Insightful if not a bit to clever about

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I felt that the story was lacking "and so what" element at times. There was nothing new in Author's slides and several themes were totally repetitive and did not resonate with me. For example, "uncertainty" is a trendy term these days which doesn't really mean much, in my view. It was a stretch to dedicate a 1/3 of the book to a topic which is part of everyday life and has been for centuries. Narration is somewhat monotonous too.

Monotonous story, lacking sequence of events

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Great first book, one I would have bought in hardback then taken a year to read. The narrator was excellent. 5 stars!

Excellent!

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The book was good, but really long, and some parts really struggled to stay focused

Struggled to finish, but some interesting topics

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Would recommend to anyone wanting to understand how global finances work and the reasons behind previous downturns. Also explains his concerns on different currencies.

Brilliant and informative book on global financed

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