The Story of Money

In the mid-1990s, Albania appeared to be a nation on the rise. Emerging from decades of isolation and communist rule, people poured their savings into investment schemes that promised extraordinary returns. But many of those schemes were little more than giant Ponzi scams. When they collapsed in early 1997, millions of people lost everything. The financial meltdown triggered mass protests and armed uprisings. The government lost control of large parts of the country and Albania teetered on the edge of civil war. In this episode, we revisit one of the most dramatic financial disasters of the post-cold war era. Host Robin Wigglesworth speaks to Ortenca Aliaj, the FT’s banking editor who was a child in Albania during the crisis, about what it was like to live through the chaos, how the schemes captured an entire nation and what the collapse reveals about the dangerous mix of financial speculation, weak institutions and public trust.

Further reading:
The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein
Credits: Getty Images

To enjoy future episodes, be sure to subscribe to The Story of Money wherever you get your podcasts, also on the show's dedicated YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@FTTheStoryOfMoney

Host: Robin Wigglesworth
Producer: Laurence Knight
Executive Producer: Manuela Saragosa
Original music: Breen Turner
Broadcast engineers: Bianca Wakeman and Petros Gioumpasis
Podcast Development: Laura Clarke
Video editor: Kristen Kenyon and Josh Divney at Podcast Discovery

Learn more at www.ft.com/tsom or get in touch at thestoryofmoney@ft.com.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Today, when people hear the name Richard Nixon, they probably think of Watergate. Few remember another one of his most controversial acts – his suspension of the dollar’s convertibility into gold. The “Nixon Shock” as it became known was a quintessentially America First policy, which shattered the postwar global monetary order. But the US president was far more concerned about juicing the US economy and winning re-election than he was about upsetting America’s closest allies. In this second episode about Nixon’s pivotal decision, Professor Jeffrey Garten tells the story of its aftermath, while hosts Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth explore the parallels with the present-day America First presidency.

Further reading:
Three Days at Camp David: How a Secret Meeting in 1971 Transformed the Global Economy, by Jeffrey E Garten (2021)
Gold and the dollar crisis, by Robert Triffin (1960)
Our Dollar, Your Problem, by Kenneth Rogoff (2025)

Credits: Getty Images, Associated Press, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library

To enjoy future episodes, be sure to subscribe to The Story of Money wherever you get your podcasts, also on the show's dedicated YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@FTTheStoryOfMoney

Hosts: Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth
Producer: Laurence Knight
Executive Producer: Manuela Saragosa
Original music: Breen Turner
Broadcast engineers: Bianca Wakeman and Petros Gioumpasis
Podcast Development: Laura Clarke
Video editor: Kristen Kenyon and Josh Divney at Podcast Discovery

Learn more at www.ft.com/tsom or get in touch at thestoryofmoney@ft.com.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A century ago, when depositors lost confidence in a bank, they’d rush to withdraw their cash. In 1971, US president Richard Milhous Nixon faced a similar dilemma. But his problem wasn’t ordinary citizens fearing for their savings. Instead, it was America’s closest allies who were nervously eyeing the dwindling supply of gold in Fort Knox at a time when the dollar’s value was tied to gold and allies’ currencies were in turn tied to the dollar. And just like a beleaguered bank manager of yore, Nixon chose to shut America’s doors to further withdrawals. His decision threatened to pull the plug on the entire international monetary system established at Bretton Woods in 1944. It was so unexpected and outrageous, it became known as the “Nixon Shock”. In the first of two episodes on the topic, hosts Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth get the story from economist and ex-financier Jeffrey Garten – a man with a CV so long that he once even worked for the Nixon administration himself.

Further reading:
Three Days at Camp David: How a Secret Meeting in 1971 Transformed the Global Economy, by Jeffrey E Garten (2021)
Gold and the dollar crisis, by Robert Triffin (1960)

Credits: Getty Images, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library

To enjoy future episodes, be sure to subscribe to The Story of Money wherever you get your podcasts, also on the show's dedicated YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@FTTheStoryOfMoney

Hosts: Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth
Producer: Laurence Knight
Executive Producer: Manuela Saragosa
Original music: Breen Turner
Broadcast engineers: Bianca Wakeman and Petros Gioumpasis
Podcast Development: Laura Clarke
Video editor: Kristen Kenyon and Josh Divney at Podcast Discovery

Learn more at www.ft.com/tsom or get in touch at thestoryofmoney@ft.com.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Priscilla Wakefield was a Quaker, writer and social reformer who believed financial security shouldn’t be reserved for the wealthy. Living in late 18th- and early 19th-century England, she founded the country’s first penny savings bank, giving working women and children a safe place to save. Victoria Bateman, author of Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power, tells hosts Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth about Wakefield’s life, her ideas and how a simple concept — saving small sums — helped spark a quiet revolution in financial inclusion, with lessons for today. But that didn’t stop Wakefield from running into financial problems of her own.

Further reading:
Economica: A global history of women, wealth and power, by Victoria Bateman (2025)
Reflections on the present condition of the female sex, by Priscilla Wakefield, (reprinted 2015, Cambridge University Press)

Credits: Cambridge Library Collection, National Portrait Gallery, Disruption Worthies, National Park Service, Hollinger & Rockey

To enjoy future episodes, be sure to subscribe to The Story of Money wherever you get your podcasts, also on the show's dedicated YouTube channel here: / @ftthestoryofmoney

Hosts: Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth
Producers: Lulu Smyth and Laurence Knight
Executive Producers: Flo Phillips and Manuela Saragosa
Original music: Breen Turner
Broadcast engineers: Bianca Wakeman and Petros Giuompasis
Podcast Development: Laura Clarke
Video editor: Kristen Kenyon and Josh Divney at Podcast Discovery

Learn more at www.ft.com/tsom or get in touch at thestoryofmoney@ft.com

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Take 730 delegates from 44 countries, plus another 2,000 or so hangers-on. House them in a remote, dilapidated hotel with holes in the roof and broken furniture. Deliver a train wagon filled with alcohol. Throw in some Russian spies, German prisoners of war, a troupe of bombshell “secretaries” and a magician. And then have the lead protagonist, the world’s most famous economist, almost die of a heart attack. What does that give you? Only the most successful international monetary negotiation in history. This is the story of the Bretton Woods conference of 1944, as relayed by journalist and author Ed Conway to hosts Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth. The three weeks of chaotic talks would deliver three decades of postwar peace and prosperity, and enthrone the US dollar as the global reserve currency. The discussions also nearly killed Britain’s lead negotiator, John Maynard Keynes, and would later disgrace his US counterpart, Harry Dexter White.

Further reading:
The Summit, by Ed Conway (2015)
The Economic Consequences of the Peace, by John Maynard Keynes (1919)
John Maynard Keynes, biography by Robert Skidelsky in three volumes (1983-2000)
Treasonable Doubt: The Harry Dexter White Spy Case, by R Bruce Craig (2004)

Credits: King’s College Cambridge, the IMF, Dreamstime, Getty Images, the Hulton Archive, Ullstein Bild, Bettmann, Shutterstock, the LIFE Picture Collection, Thomas D McAvoy, Alfred Eisenstaedt, and the Darling Archive.

To enjoy future episodes, be sure to subscribe to The Story of Money wherever you get your podcasts, also on the show's dedicated YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@FTTheStoryOfMoney

Hosts: Gillian Tett and Robin Wigglesworth
Producer: Laurence Knight
Executive Producers: Flo Phillips and Manuela Saragosa
Original music: Breen Turner
Broadcast engineers: Bianca Wakeman and Petros Giuompasis
Podcast Development: Laura Clarke
Video editor: Kristen Kenyon and Josh Divney at Podcast Discovery

Learn more at ft.com/tsom or get in touch at thestoryofmoney@ft.com.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.