When Atlantic Richfield prospectors struck oil at Prudhoe Bay early in 1968, they stumbled upon the largest oil field ever discovered in North America. Getting that oil out of Alaska would take nine years, employ some 78,000 people, cost more than $8 billion, and require threading 800 miles of steel pipe through America’s most pristine [...]

Episode Three: The New Rules of the Game With communism discredited, more and more nations harness their fortunes to the global free-market. China, Southeast Asia, India, Eastern Europe and Latin America all compete to attract the developed world’s investment capital, and tariff barriers fall. In the United States Republican and Democratic administrations both embrace unfettered [...]

Episode Two: The Agony of Reform As the 1980s begin and the Cold War grinds on, the existing world order appears firmly in place. Yet beneath the surface powerful currents are carving away at the economic foundations. Western democracies still struggle with deficits and inflation, while communism hides the failure of its command economy behind [...]

Episode One: The Battle of Ideas A global economy, energized by technological change and unprecedented flows of people and money, collapses in the wake of a terrorist attack …. The year is 1914. Worldwide war results, exhausting the resources of the great powers and convincing many that the economic system itself is to blame. From [...]

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, akaThe Elvis of cultural theory, is given the floor to show of his polemic style and whirlwind-like performance. The Giant of Ljubljana is bombarded with clips of popular media images and quotes by modern-day thinkers revolving around four major issues: the economical crisis, environment, Afghanistan and the end of democracy. Zizek [...]

Quants are the math wizards and computer programmers in the engine room of our global financial system who designed the financial products that almost crashed Wall st. The credit crunch has shown how the global financial system has become increasingly dependent on mathematical models trying to quantify human (economic) behavior. Now the quants are at [...]

The Money Programme team presents an inside account of the BP oil spill. Features a host of interviews with key industry insiders, including world exclusives with Bob Dudley, the new Head of BP and Tony Hayward, his predecessor.

Every day in Vienna the amount of unsold bread sent back to be disposed of is enough to supply Austria’s second-largest city, Graz. Around 350,000 hectares of agricultural land, above all in Latin America, are dedicated to the cultivation of soybeans to feed Austria’s livestock while one quarter of the local population starves. Every European [...]

Bloomberg Game Changers” follows the career of Mark Zuckerberg, founder and chief executive officer of Facebook Inc. and one of the world’s youngest billionaires. This program features interviews with Tyler Winklevoss, Cameron Winklevoss and Divya Narendra, who accused Zuckerberg of stealing their idea for the social-networking website, Yuri Milner, chief executive officer of Digital Sky [...]