Dark Towers audiobook

With Trump in the White House there would presumably be extensive digging into every deal he’d ever done, every partner he’d ever worked with, every loan he’d ever received—many of which involved Deutsche. And the facts that Trump’s election was under a cloud because of Russia’s efforts to sway the vote and that his leading lender had for years been engaged in money-laundering activity in Russia—well, it didn’t take a genius to realize that real or imagined dots would soon be connected linking Deutsche to Russia to Donald Trump. This was especially true since the bank a decade earlier had connected Trump with wealthy Russians as he prepared to build resorts in Hawaii and Mexico. We all know that those much anticipated revelations have had scant time in the sun, but we also know that Deutsche Bank (DB) is where a whole bunch of the bodies are buried. In looking at DB, Donald Trump makes up only a small part of the book, but he is the tale that wags the dog in this biography of a bank. Donald Trump is a deadbeat, a con man extraordinaire. After getting massive loans from a range of New York banks, and stiffing them, resulting in massive losses, he was essentially blacklisted in New York. No reputable bank would lend him anything. Yet, as he announced his candidacy for the presidency, there was one financial entity still willing to do deals with him. How did DB get to a point where they were the only bank in the world that would lend money to such a complete fiscal lowlife. How could any bank make loans of billions of dollars to him and his family? David Enrich - image from AirMail.NewsEnrich introduces us early to a key figure in understanding DB’s secrets. Val Broeksmit was the ne’er do well stepson of Bill Broeksmit, a reasonably ethical guy who had been called on multiple times to step in at DB and make sure things were being done on the up and up. When they were not, he let upper management know. This does not mean that his advice was always heeded. But there came a time when regulators were closing in, and a part of DB where he had particular responsibility had been doing business in an unacceptable way. He had missed it. Years of working at this mad company had taken a toll. He had retired or tried to retire several times, but, like Michael Corleone in Godfather III, he finds it is not so easy to stay out. The years of major stress and this final failing, his internalization of the stresses of the company, became too much. Bill hanged himself. (although Val thinks he was killed) Val managed to get his hands on considerable quantities of stepdad’s communications. How he uses this trove, and how it is used by others, researchers, authors, and government officials, forms a tranche that permeates the modern story of the bank. As an example of how greed turns good people turn bad, though, it is never made clear that Broeksmit had ever really done anything illegal or clearly unethical. Maybe it is more that this criminal corporation had destroyed a guy who was basically decent, who had the temerity to ask how bank actions might affect their clients.Bill Broeksmit - image from The New York PostEnrich gives us a look at the bank’s beginnings in the 19th century, its later alignment with Nazis, as it removed Jews from its board and staff, its financing of the construction of Aushwitz, and its survival, after the war. The USA wanted the bank liquidated, but the UK wanted it around to help in paying the UK the war debts Germany had agreed to.Val Broeksmit - image from the NY TimesDB settled in to being a conservative bank, serving businesses, and scrupulously looking after their clients’ interests. But a new element entered as derivatives began to grow from a conservative way to hedge one’s risks to a form of casino gambling. DB looked to expand from its European roots to a global presence. They brought in people, from the USA and elsewhere, who had the expertise to establish DB in these new markets.Josef Ackermann - image from The Irish Times - DB CEO from 2002 to 2012 – he led the huge expansion of the corporationIt was wildly successful, even if the paper DB held, now that it was gambling with its own as well its clients’ money, might be wildly overvalued. DB had made itself into the largest bank in the world. Part of the success was because the top bosses demanded insane levels of growth. At one point it was expected that profits should grow 25% a year. In no sane world was this possible. But there were, however, insane ways to achieve the goal. Do business with dodgy characters with whom no one else wanted to do business, and charge them hefty fees for the privilege. People like Russian oligarchs, middle eastern royal families, and kleptocrats, were eager for ways to transform their local currencies into dollars or euros, and DB was more than happy to help. They were also willing to match eastern dirty laundry with western spin cycles, and thus were able to connect Russian officials busy looting their nation’s resources with, say, real estate developers in need of large cash infusions to pursue expensive projects, for a piece of the action. Legality was an unfortunate victim to such transactions. International sanctions were ignored. Adherence to fiduciary norms took a hit. The result was that DB eventually became known for the stain of its dishonesty with its own customers, and willingness to cut legal corners to sustain an unnatural level of growth. Neither did the Mad Max atmosphere at the bank do much for the people working there, except, of course, for those directing the crimes, who made off with staggering sums. Enrich tells the DB story by focusing on a series of individuals at the upper levels of management, offering not only a look at where they came from and what they did in their executive positions, but a take on their personalities, what made them tick, even, for some, their family lives. This approach is a common, but effective one, that succeeds in making the DB story not one of a glass-encased corporate entity (or, a person, according to Mitt Romney) but a human story, with some decent people, some bad guys, and some really, really bad guys. The DB towers in Frankfurt – image by Krisztian Bocs for BloombergThere are some fun bits in here that are likely to surprise you, like how Val and his trove of dad’s intel got connected with Adam Schiff by way of Moby. Mostly, though, Val’s doings seem sad rather than enlightening, but do offer a bit of a look at how difficult it can be, sometimes, for journalists and investigators to secure much-needed information, when the source is less than a standup sort. Anshu Jain - Co-CEO of DB from 2011 to 2015 – he left as a result of the the Libor Rate-fixing Scandal - image from FirstPost.comBy the end you will see how it came about that DJT had found a financial home with DB, and you will know what it took for a conservative institution to have totally lost its mind and evolved into a grand scale criminal enterprise. And you will be left wondering just how long it will take for the wheels of justice to grind their way to delivering actual justice to so many who flaunt the laws to the detriment of the rest of us. In the final months of the Obama administration, all signs had pointed to charges soon being filed against bank employees and probably the bank itself. At the very least, a multibillion-dollar financial penalty looked all but certain.Something curious, however, had happened as soon as Trump took the oath of office. The investigation had gone silent. Week after week, Deutsch’s lawyers and executives wondered when they would get an update. At first, they worried that the delay spelled trouble. Perhaps, after campaigning as a populist, after vowing that he was “not going to let Wall Street get away with murder,” Trump planned an aggressive crackdown on banking malfeasance. Perhaps, after having his election victory tarnished by Russian interference, Trump would try to dispel those suspicions with a high-profile assault on Russian money laundering. But as the months passed, and nothing happened, executives’ fears faded. One source of relief was the realization that two of the Justice Department’s most powerful prosecutors, Geoffrey Berman and Robert Khuzami, both had previously represented Deutsche…Bank executives soon concluded that Russia was off-limits, too hot to handle, for the Trump administration. So, it seemed, was Deutsche. Review posted – February 28, 2020Publication date----------February 18, 2020 - hardcover----------December 16, 2020 - trade paperback=============================EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s GR, Twitter, Instagram and FB pagesInterviews----- Expected case against Deutsche Bank disappeared in Trump transition-----Rachel Maddow - Transcript of the entire show-----NPR - 'Dark Towers' Exposes Chaos And Corruption At The Bank That Holds Trump's Secrets - by Dale DaviesItems of Interest-----Why are so many bankers committing suicide?-----NY Times – by Enrich - Me and My Whistle-Blower-----The Libor Scandal

This book is all about Deutsche Bank. The Donald Trump material is mostly added to get you to buy the book. There are no revelations about Trump's relations with the bank that have not already been disseminated; however, it is presented in clear and coherent prose and that was worth the price of the book. The true revelations of the book are the machinations of banking and finance that are so non-productive and often destructive to the economy and real people's lives. The old saying the money is the root of all evil is the lesson. Tragic impositions on lives and the moral dilemmas folks face in business, finance and gobs of money are very poignantly unmasked here. The complexity of people allowed to treat banked money is always shocking and this book is a documentation of a great deal of that. The author was very sensitive to an average person's understanding of banking in this era. Thanks to Rachel Maddow for recommending this book.

Germany’s Deutsche Bank has a long history of some, frankly, “odd” financial dealings that began when the bank was created from putting together many banks to make one large one. Some of these shenanigans involve Donald Trump’s business loans, but David Enright looks at the bank in its history in his book, “Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction”.Russian oligarchs mix with shady characters from all over the world in money laundering that other banks wouldn’t touch. Why would Deutsche Bank make specious loans? Who was behind the bank’s business decisions and how do people like a US Supreme Court Justice figure into American politics? David Enright’s book is a great read which exposes the dirty side of Deutsche Bank and its dealing.

This is the book Trump should have tried to ban. Forget Bolton et al. It reveals the incestuous relationship between a bank, Russia, money laundering, and its most famous client. The bank that Donald Trump came to rely on to subsidize his shrinking empire after banks in the US refused to loan him money, having been stiffed by him too often. He had a habit of just not repaying the loans.(A running joke is that Donald had written many books on making deals and business, but they all ended with Chapter 11.)The bank itself, after having been taken over by US traders, was getting into trouble by emphasizing short-term profits through ever-increasing levels of risk. Traders were paid by the estimated return on a bet, usually using derivatives which formerly had been better used to lower risk. They would often over-estimate the return knowing that their compensation would not be adjusted downward if the bet failed to return their estimate. Many were earning millions every year in bonuses.Steve Bannon, quoted in Fire and Fury, noted that the Trump family was all about cash. Eric Trump had been quoted as saying they could get all the money they needed from Russia, and Bannon (who himself has been charged with stealing money from Wall donors) saw the insatiable appetite for money that the Trump family had. Bannon"s story was interesting in itself. He had been a trader at Goldman Sachs, but his father had suffered financial collapse in 2008 and that turned Bannon into a flaming revenge artist vowing to get the eastern bankers, i.e. a standard economic populist. He allied himself with Trump's populist rhetoric.It gets even messier as Enrich lays out the connections between Justin Kennedy to the Trump family. In case anyone has forgotten, Brett Kavanaugh clerked for Anthony Kennedy, Justin's father, who interceded with Trump on Kavanaugh’s behalf. The banks affairs became so entangled that there were several suicides of bank officers and lawyers who despaired of unethical and illegal machinations. Greed and money laundering would appear to be at the heart of much modern finance and Trump was right in the middle.The all consuming emphasis on profit meant that traders would go anywhere, to any country, that needed hard currency. Since most of the world's trades were conducted in US dollars, much of those transactions occurred through New York. And since Deutsche was trading with rogue countries under US sanction, like Iran, Syria, and Russia, interest was aroused in intelligence and legal quarters. When it became apparent that US soldiers were being killed in Iraq by weapons used by terrorists being supported by Iran, the families of the dead soldiers filed suit against Deutsche. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, money laundering became endemic and an audit revealed that Russian mafia money was pouring into the US through Deutsche's Eastern Europe connections, most of it being washed in New York's lucrative luxury real estate market. Guess who was a big player in that market? After the crash of 2008, caused in large part by the risky bets using unusual financial instruments of big banks, especially Deutsche, country leaders looked to those bank leaders for advice. In Germany, Merkle went to Ackerman, head of Deutsche whose advice profited no one more than Deutsche itself. Without going into too much detail and having no desire to spoil a great story, thousands of emails from a Deutsche banker who had committed suicide fell into the hands of reporters. They revealed that the loans Trump had personally guaranteed (meaning the bank could go after his personal wealth should he default on the huge number of loans he had with them) had been layered off to a Russian bank, meaning that the loans were actually coming from the Russians. (Remember that Eric Trump had bragged his family could get all the money they wanted from the Russians.) So you had a situation where a new American president owed millions of dollars to a Russian bank that was controlled by the KGB.A fascinating, if disturbing, read. Stay tuned, the story continues.

Considerable detail on the machinations of Deutsche Bank and their dealings in the derivatives market on Wall Street. Dark Towers is the story of a staid, old organization run by fusty Germans that encountered Wall Street and liked the results all the while making increasingly risky investments leveraged by derivatives. The only bank willing to take a chance with the likes of Donald Trump, a profligate real estate grifter with multiple loan defaults to his name AND his high risk soon to be son-in-law Jared (who introduced him to Deutsche Bank). It all seemed like a sweet deal until the Feds and European regulators started levying fines in the 100's of millions of dollars/euros for a host of illegal trading activities on Deutsche; then against all odds Trump became the president of the U.S., which naturally horrified Deutsche Bank given his new authority, penchant for default and the ill will that would likely result if the bank were to call in their >$700M in loans on his failing real estate empire.You wonder how this happened and realize that one person virtually unknown despite all the negative news about Trump and his business dealings (Rosemary Vrablic) an account rep with Deutsche Bank's Private Wealth organization was able to persuade her management to keep fronting loans for yet another real estate project to Trump. While Deutsche Bank may be the lender the betting line is that it's actually Russia's VTB Bank among others that hold the loans which makes the outcome of the Supreme Court case filed by State of NY seeking Trump's financials all the more intriguing. Stay tuned...

Crooked ass lender backs crooked ass debtor. Here are the the storied lives of megalomaniacs: sketchy derivatives, unorthodox multimillion-dollar loans, zero ethics, and more than one suicide. This shit blows my (former) corporate-multimillion/billion-dollar-loan-analyst mind. A bit dry, but a worthy read.

Think of “Dark Towers” first and foremost as a comprehensive book on the modern history of Deutsche, and it does a great job at that. There are a couple of initial chapters about the bank’s founding, involvement with the American railway, and dealings with the Nazis during World War II. The many detailed accounts of mismanagement and how the company went off the tracks both culturally and morally is told through stories on several high-ranking figures (i.e., Bill Broeksmit, Edson Mitchell, Anshu Jain, Rajeev Misra). The details leading up to the 2008 financial crisis are described well, especially on the risky derivatives plays Deutsche was doing at the time - only really making it through the crisis by betting against the housing market (as described in books like “Big Short”).As another reviewer mentioned, the Trump chapters seem to have been sort of tacked on later and are only really connected with the rest of the storylines at the very end of the book. The books provide great insights into how a large organization ended up so far astray, and how a dangerous mix of unchecked bankers and mind-boggling monetary incentives ended up without proper oversight and controls in place.I learned a ton about the inner workings of banks and money laundering schemes at scale, especially how banks like Deutsche were instrumental in assisting Russians with moving money away from the Kremlin. I think the author spent a bit too much time on Val (Bill Broeksmit’s adopted son), but that was expected since he was the primary source for David Enrich - and it does help move the story along, almost like a novel at times.

Great book on the immoral business practices of Deutsche Bank and how it’s loans contributed a lot to the rise of Donald Trump

Spannender Einblick in ein Unternehmen, für das ich vor knapp 20 Jahren auch mal als Zeitarbeiter ne Woche gejobbt habe. War damals™ meine erste Begegnung mit Leuz, die aufn Klo koksen bzw. in der Kabine weinend Frust bewältigen.Gut erzählt mit Understatement gesprochen. Idealer Recherche-Stoff für Kreative, die irgendwas schreiben wollen über institutionelle Machtgebilde, zB Staats-Magier eines Fantasy-Romans.Bester Running ›Gag‹: Dank der völlig verballerten IT-Infrastruktur mit zig verschiedenen Systemen, die nicht miteinander kompatibel sind, läßt sich ganz vorzüglich Nachvollziehbarkeit verunmöglichen und Verantwortungszuordnung verschleiern.Krassester Gag: Investment-Sparte setzt, wie alle anderen Banken auch, Trump auf rote Liste, weil er eben seine Kredite nicht zurückzahlt, aber bei der Privatkunden-Sparte nehmen sie ihn dann wieder mit offenen Armen auf und werfen ihm Geld nach.NATÜRLICH ist das Buch, obwohl auch auf Deutsch erschienen (bei Redline), bei uns so gut wie kein Thema (kein Eintrag bei Perlentaucher). Grad mal ne Handvoll Interviews mit Enrich in deutschen Medien.

Incredible, you just can't make this stuff up!

This was an interesting business history of Deutsche Bank - the book was at its best in its telling of the story of Edson Mitchell and his lieutenants who brought Wall Street ambition and the alchemy of derivatives to a sleepy German institution (albeit one with its own history of controversy without American assistance). The cultural clashes ever present in the ranks of DB management, and their interaction with powerful egos (Anshu Jain's in particular) made for captivating reading. This book was partly billed as an expose of Deutsche's dealings with Donald Trump, and I think it disappointed on this front. While it exposed a lot of amazing patterns and anecdotes regarding the Deutsche/Trump history, I felt it ended up with some of the same problems as other Trump-era books - it built up a lot of anticipated outrage and failed to deliver a smoking gun or any type of resolution to this crescendo. Many of the episodes in the Deutsche/Trump record are astounding - but there isn't a direct Russia-Trump link via DB established here, and the discussions about the DB/Trump probes in the post-2018 Democratic House have not yet yielded results - so the conclusion leaves the reader looking for more. And I didn't know what to make of the Val Broeksmit character and found that the strong emphasis on him as a significant character in the Deutsche saga was more journalistically convenient than truly representative. At any rate, this was well researched and reported, and quite comprehensive in its approach to a subject that's often in the news but whose story has lacked a connective narrative thread.

Fascinating, superb, intriguing, and oh my does this book ever need a followup! As interesting and well-written as The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History, and sooooo much better than American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery by Craig Unger. David Enrich is fast becoming one of my favourite non-fiction authors. He makes esoteric financial concepts easy to understand. I look forward to whatever he works on next!

This book was super interesting from start to finish. It was well-written and well-researched. I learned a lot about the many unethical and criminal activities Deutsche Bank has engaged in over the years. It was also the main bank to support Donald Trump financially when no other bank would. One branch of the bank said no more loans to Trump after lending him money for Trump Tower in Chicago and not getting paid back. But another part of the bank kept lending him millions of dollars despite his awful credit history. The men who ran this organization cared more about making money than anything else and many people and organisations got hurt as a result. A few high-level bank employees even killed themselves, including Bill Broeksmit, among others.

As others have noted, this is really a history of Deutsche Bank over the last twenty years. Trump is a kind of recurring minor character in the story, not the center.That said, it's a very interesting work of economic history and journalism. Basically the story of how Deutsche tried to transform itself from a sleepy German institution into a Wall Street powerhouse, did everything wrong, and drove itself into the ground. A cautionary tale of what happens when a bank abandons basic risk management and control practices and pursues profit above all. Fun to read and well-written.

A very interesting and timely read to expand knowledge of where we are geopolitically and financially. The Trump part of it is the least of it. Very detailed and nicely written. Wasn't too crazy about the audio book narrator but not objectionable. I hope to hell that this is being made into a mini-series.