Category: Miniseries

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Sticky Wicket: Louisiana Politics Versus the Press is a new mini series out of WWNO New Orleans Public Radio and WRKF Baton Rouge Public Radio that takes on four historic clashes between Louisiana politicians and the media, one at a time. These relationships have always been love/hate in the Pelican state.array(3) { [0]=> string(55) "https://cpa.ds.npr.org/wwno/audio/2018/11/SWtrailer.mp3" [1]=> string(0) "" [2]=> string(1) "0" }

A dramatic blow by blow account from then Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the bank bailout. Along with Chancellor Alistair Darling at the Treasury, Governor Mervyn King at the Bank of England, and BBC Business Editor Robert Peston, witness the race against time to deliver a bold plan to stabilise the financial system before the banks go bust. Taking us inside incredible scenes: in the Oval Office where Gordon receives a fax saying Bradford and Bingley has gone bust whilst trying to persuade President Bush to recapitalise; bank Chief Executives being bundled in the back door of the Treasury for secret meetings that are immediately leaked; Alistair trying to keep a straight face at a boring Finance Ministers meeting in Luxembourg whilst RBS goes belly up; heretical invitations from President Sarkozy for Gordon to attend Euro Group meeting at the Elysee Palace when Britain isn’t even in the Eurozone; phone calls from bankers saying they just need a bit of spare cash to tide them over, and their inevitable downfall. This is the story of what happened as the drama unfolded, without analysis, interpretation, or hindsight; because at the time nobody knew whether the biggest injection of cash into banks in British history would be enough to stave off Armageddon.

Highlighting the epidemic of exceptionally capable professionals driven by a profound belief in their own inadequacy. Their ability and relentless drive to excel make them likely to succeed in the competitive environment of elite professional and financial firms, but the work culture is also taking advantage of their vulnerabilities.

Ten years ago, the world watched as the biggest financial meltdown in history unfolded. The crash plunged the world into recession, lost millions of families their homes and its shadow still hangs over our politics today. And when the Queen went to the London School of Economics, she asked the question everyone wanted the answer to: why did no one see it coming? Aditya Chakrabortty, senior economics commentator at the Guardian newspaper, chairs a discussion between four economists who can claim they did.

Both Amazon and Apple have become the first companies in history to be valued at more than a trillion dollars each. There are fears this dominance, particularly by technology companies including Facebook and Google, could lead to monopolies which hurt consumers. The advent of these trillion dollar valuations comes as a growing number of critics begin to ask if it is time for regulators to step in and either cut the technology firms down to size, or break them up altogether. Adam Lashinsky, author of 'Inside Apple', joins Barry Lynn, executive director of the Open Markets Institute to debate whether the market or the government will decide the future of these companies.

Banking used to be a laid-back profession involving long lunches and the odd loan approval to a business. Over the last few decades that has all changed as financial institutions focus increasingly on selling products to the public and thinking up ever more complicated money making schemes for the world markets. This process - often described as financialisation - has meant increased profits for the banks but is also seen as a threat to the rest of the economy. Authors Rana Foroohar and Joshua Ryan-Collins argue that some financial institutions may once again repeating old mistakes

David Grossman considers the growing influence and appeal of state capitalism, asking whether free-market and state capitalist systems can coexist and compete fairly. Joining David are Joshua Kurlantzick, author of "How the Return of Statism is Transforming the World", and economist Dr Linda Yueh, author of "The Great Economists, How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today".

Governments are often ready to close down sectors of their economies which they believe are inefficient, like coal mining, and keen to promote more efficient high tech companies. Back in 2000, author and government adviser Edward Luttwak coined the term Turbo Capitalism to describe how governments are enabling the destruction of well paid "dignified" jobs and replacing them with poorly paid low status occupations. These new roles may appear to be part of a more efficient system, but are, he argues, actually more damaging to society as a whole. He is joined by author James Bloodworth, who described the six months he spent working undercover in a variety of poorly paid positions in "Hired".

Imagine you are heading to the shops and someone steals your shopping list. Then they race ahead and bought all the goods ahead of you, forcing you to buy your shopping from them at a higher price. That is what is happening to ordinary share traders like pension funds. When they go to buy some shares, they find high frequency traders have snapped them up nanoseconds before them and want to sell them at a higher price. These traders now account for the majority of all trades on major stock markets. David Grossman explores the rights and wrongs of this new world with Brad Katsuyama, CEO of IEX, a new stock exchange which wants to clamp down on high frequency traders, and Professor Donald MacKenzie of the University of Edinburgh.