A Long Time In Finance

"At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in—or more precisely not in—the country’s business and banks. It varies in size with the business cycle. In good times, people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful.In depression, all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he proves himself otherwise. The bezzle shrinks." Neil, Jonathan and Izabella Kaminska of The Blind Spot apply JK Galbraith's concept of "the Bezzle" to Silicon Valley Bank's collapse. With interest rates rising, they conclude, the bezzle is shrinking.  Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Izabella Kaminska.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How did fund managers end up controlling so much of the essential services on which we rely, from water to electricity and property? Who gave them the money? And does it matter that they do? Neil and Jonathan talk to author Brett Christophers, whose new book Our Lives in Their Portfolios argues that the giant funds that dominate the landscape are driven by terrible incentives - and that's why they are running our infrastructure into the ground. Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Brett Christophers.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Neil Woodford was the fund manager who seemed to have it all. Hailed as the genius who "made Middle England rich", he ran one of the UK's best performing investment funds for decades. And then in a few hubristic years, after sticking his own name above the door, he raised an insane amount of cash, made some risky bets and lost the lot. Neil and Jonathan talk to David Ricketts, author of a book on Woodford, about his fall, the reasons for it, and what we've learned.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With David Ricketts.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"What is all this about being big?" asked the actor Anthony Hopkins in a famous (if toe-curling) ad from 2000 for Barclays Bank. "You know, seeing the big picture, having the big idea, clinching the big deal; no one wants to clinch the little deal." For decades the British bank followed this restless urge, always trying to get bigger, to keep up with the biggest banks in the world. Neil and Jonathan talk to author and former banker Philip Augar about where it came from, how it led a stuffy old British bank to tie themselves to the one man who seemed able to deliver bigness, Bob Diamond, and how those aspirations turned to dustPresented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Philip Auguar.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In partnership with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Charles Ponzi was the first, FTX perhaps the latest, but few "rob Peter to pay Paul" schemes will ever match the sheer scale and staying power of Bernie Madoff's $64bn heist. As a new documentary airs about the "Monster of Wall St", Neil and Jonathan talk to author and fraud connoisseur Dan Davies about the world's most destructive Ponzi scheme.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Dan Davies.Executive produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.Produced by Ewan Cameron.In association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this final episode of our six part series, Neil tells the story of the rise and fall of Bernie Cornfeld, mutual fund peddlar extraordinaire and founder of Investors Overseas Services, whose pitch to the aspiring affluent was "Do you sincerely want to be rich?" (Spoiler alert: they didn't end up getting rich.)Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.In partnership with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the fifth of our historical series, Jonathan tells the story of Clarence Saunders - grocer extraordinaire, entrepreneur and valiant battler against the soulless money-makers of Wall Street - and how he attempted the last great corner on the New York Stock Exchange.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.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 fourth of our series of historical shorts, Neil explains how a competition case before the Restrictive Practices Court in the early 1980s led to the reforms that turned the London Stock Exchange from the Hogwartian Victorian club he remembers from his own time "on the floor" in the Swinging Sixties to the polyglot digital marketplace we know and love today. Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.Made in association with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On May 15 1648, the same day Holland signed the Treaty of Munster ending its 80 year war with Spain, a Dutch canal board issued a bond of 1,000 Carolus guilders to a Mr Niclaes de Meijer of Utrecht promising to pay him 5 per interest in perpetuity. In the latest of our Long Time Shorts, Jonathan explains how that promise is still being kept 374 years later, what Mr de Meijer's bond might be worth today, and why the Dutch are so good (relatively speaking) at meeting their financial obligations. Lang leve Nederland!Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.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 six-part series of historical shorts, Neil takes us back to the 1970s; a benighted time when you could only take £50 per head out of the country on your foreign holidays. We explain the regime that underpinned this miserable system, how it criminalised the otherwise law-abiding middle classes, and why its much feared (by HM Treasury) abolition in 1979 was the dog that didn't bark.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.Made in partnership with Briefcase.News Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.