false 6025160 5 <B>With penetrating insights for today, this vital history of the world economic collapse of the late 1920s offers unforgettable portraits of the four men whose personal and professional actions as heads of their respective central banks changed the course of the twentieth century</B><BR><BR> It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person’s or government’s control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.<BR><BR> In <I>Lords of Finance</I>, we meet the neurotic and enigmatic Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, the xenophobic and suspicious Émile Moreau of the Banque de France, the arrogant yet brilliant Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, and Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose façade of energy and drive masked a deeply wounded and overburdened man. After the First World War, these central bankers attempted to reconstruct the world of international finance. Despite their differences, they were united by a common fear—that the greatest threat to capitalism was inflation— and by a common vision that the solution was to turn back the clock and return the world to the gold standard.<BR><BR> For a brief period in the mid-1920s they appeared to have succeeded. The world’s currencies were stabilized and capital began flowing freely across the globe. But beneath the veneer of boom-town prosperity, cracks started to appear in the financial system. The gold standard that all had believed would provide an umbrella of stability proved to be a straitjacket, and the world economy began that terrible downward spiral known as the Great Depression.<BR><BR> As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, the Great Depression and the year 1929 remain the benchmark for true financial mayhem. Offering a new understanding of the global nature of financial crises, <I>Lords of Finance</I> is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, of their fallibility, and of the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong. 6200639 book 22 1 2009 Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World total:90|5:22|4:38|3:25|2:4|1:1| 90 346 327 36 3 1 false false Wed Apr 01 13:48:24 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 17 12:41:39 -0700 2009
I've lowered my rating. This book is good, and got off to a rousing start. Well-written, fascinating... and ...more...]]> 0 1 false false Sun Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 11 10:40:53 -0800 2009 Sun Mar 01 11:31:12 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Sep 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 29 07:18:56 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 29 07:19:19 -0700 2009 Lords of Finance is an informative and extremely detailed account of the money policies of Britain, France, Germany and the United States from the close of the First World War through 1933- with a brief foray into the years of the Second World War. The subtitle “the Bankers Who Broke the World”...more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Jun 08 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 11 07:23:54 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 11 08:07:54 -0700 2009 Ahamed's one of those lucky authors who spends a decade working on a book and then pop! it lands at Borders the second its subject supposedly becomes essential to global salvation. Suddenly every anchor with 5 spare minutes wants an interview.

Ahamed wrote a book on central banking...more...]]> 0 0 false false Fri May 15 20:11:50 -0700 2009 Fri May 15 20:12:07 -0700 2009 Guardian review: "As the global economy moves down its most dangerous spiral in more than 60 years, the causes and consequences of the great depression have become a subject of burning interest. Are there parallels with what's happening today, and what are the lessons to be learned? ... In a br...more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Apr 15 12:44:35 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 15 12:44:35 -0700 2009 Almost all critics praised Lords of Finance for its command of economic history and engaging, lucid prose. Ahamed, noted the New York Times, illuminates wise parallels between the misplaced confidence that spawned the global depression in the 1930s and the illusory calculations of risk that led to t...

more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Nov 13 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Nov 08 17:57:46 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 14 12:53:36 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Jun 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 26 09:24:30 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 01 18:27:05 -0700 2009 Lords of Finance will be one of the best finance or history books published this year and quite likely will be one of the best of any book released in 2009.

Admittedly the story of four central bankers...more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri May 22 07:03:23 -0700 2009 Fri May 22 07:07:38 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jun 16 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 16 02:52:44 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 16 03:12:41 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Apr 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 20 01:28:46 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 20 01:28:58 -0700 2009
Who knew that a study of central bankers could be a page-turner? Investment manager Liaquat Ahamed spins a fast-moving yarn about central bankers’ disastrous monetary policy decisions in the 1920s and early 1930s. The story itself yields lit...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jun 16 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat May 30 08:00:41 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 16 17:24:43 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Mar 28 13:03:56 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 20 11:58:53 -0700 2009
Lords of finance
Jan 8th 2009
From The Economist print edition

The central bankers of the Great Depression were obsessed with a single idea, rather l...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Jul 12 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 09 12:36:53 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 14 13:59:29 -0700 2009
I think I understand a bit more abo...more...]]> 4 2 false false Wed May 27 21:04:24 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 03 00:15:39 -0700 2009 Wed May 27 21:04:24 -0700 2009
This is obviously a timely book with many frighteni...more...]]> 1 2 false false Fri May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jan 31 13:55:14 -0800 2009 Sun May 10 08:46:56 -0700 2009
Screw waterboarding, let’s make the terrorists read this book cover to cover. Its length is only dwarfed by its lack of pace.

In theory, this is a 500 page book about the four central bankers whose missteps led to the Great Depression and sinking of the global economy ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 27 19:43:49 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 27 19:49:26 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue May 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun May 31 12:23:38 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 01 07:31:55 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu May 21 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu May 07 14:43:35 -0700 2009 Thu May 21 11:47:53 -0700 2009 ...more...]]> 0 0 false false Sun Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Nov 02 04:45:56 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 02 04:48:07 -0800 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=6025160