Lords of Finance Quotes

“Nothing brings home the fragility of the banking system or the potency of a financial crisis more vividly than writing about these issues from the eye of the storm. Watching the world’s central bankers and finance officials grappling with the current situation—trying one thing after another to restore confidence, throwing everything they can at the problem, coping daily with unexpected and startling shifts in market sentiment—reinforces the lesson that there is no magic bullet or simple formula for dealing with financial panics.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“the gold standard was incapable of preventing the sort of financial booms and busts that were, and continue to be, such a feature of the economic landscape. These bubbles and crises seem to be deep-rooted in human nature and inherent to the capitalist system. By one count there have been sixty different crises since the early seventeenth century—the first documented bank panic can, however, be dated to A.D. 33 when the Emperor Tiberius had to inject one million gold pieces of public money into the Roman financial system to keep it from collapsing.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“Watching other people become rich is not much fun, especially if they do it overnight and without any effort.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“For despite his liberal family background, he was a typical product of the Kaiserreich—conformist, unquestioningly nationalistic, and fiercely proud of his country and its material and intellectual achievements.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“By one count there have been sixty different crises since the early seventeenth century—the first documented bank panic can, however, be dated to A.D. 33 when the Emperor Tiberius had to inject one million gold pieces of public money into the Roman financial system to keep it from collapsing.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“By 1914, fifty-nine countries had bound their currencies to gold.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“Unlike today, however, when central banks are required by law to promote price stability and full employment, in 1914 the single most important, indeed overriding, objective of these institutions was to preserve the value of the currency.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“As the unemployment lines lengthened, banks shut their doors, farm prices collapsed, and factories closed, there was talk of apocalypse.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“In December 1930, the Bank of United States, which despite its name was a private bank with no official status, went down in the largest single bank failure in U.S. history, leaving frozen some $ 200 million in depositors’ funds.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“Read no history—nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.—BENJAMIN DISRAELI”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“Because the value of a currency was tied, by law, to a specific quantity of gold and because the amount of currency that could be issued was tied to the quantity of gold reserves, governments had to live within their means, and when strapped for cash, could not manipulate the value of the currency. Inflation therefore remained low. Joining the gold standard became a "badge of honor," a signal that each subscribing government had pledged itself to a stable currency and orthodox financial policies. By 1914, fifty-nine countries had bound their currencies to gold.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: 1929, The Great Depression, and the Bankers who Broke the World

“I reflect with a good deal of satisfaction that because our rulers are as incompetent as they are mad and wicked, one particular era of a particular kind of civilization is very nearly over.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“Much of the negotiating had been done prior to the conference between the Americans and the British. At”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“Keynes’s wartime efforts had taken a severe toll on his health.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“After two years of negotiations between Keynes and White, the differences were ironed out—largely in favor of the more powerful Americans.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“As originally conceived, the British and American plans did differ in emphasis. Keynes’s plan was more ambitious in size and scope.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“He also acted as the principal negotiator for Britain with the Americans over the scope, terms, and conditions of Lend-Lease.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“Determined to avoid a repeat of the mistakes of the First World War, which had largely been financed by printing money, Keynes designed the framework for paying for this war without as much recourse to inflation.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“German reparations had now been canceled; France and Britain had defaulted on war debts;”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“The Foreign Office tried to convince him that, in the circumstances, such a visit was undesirable, but Norman insisted on going.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“Despite all this, he was reappointed governor for an additional eleven years—perhaps because with his authority so diminished there was little damage he could do.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“Norman had to content himself with a much diminished role in British and international financial affairs.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“Moreau was forced out by the Vichy regime for being too sympathetic to Britain—the ultimate irony for a man who at the peak of his career had done his best to undermine British dominance in finance.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“Furious at being lumped in with the “gangsters” of the Nazi regime, he insisted that”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“Though Schacht remained on the fringes of the resistance movement, he was never trusted enough to be included in the inner circles.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“In any case, it died for lack of money and of countries willing to accept the refugees.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“Nevertheless, he fought against many of the regime’s more extreme policies against Jews not so much on moral grounds as out of the pragmatic fear that they were harming the economy.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“France now risked being left stranded as the highest cost producer of all the major powers in the world.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“France had managed to sidestep the collapse of the world economy in 1929 and 1930.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

“Moreover, once the need to keep the pound pegged to gold had been removed, Norman had been able to cut interest rates to 2 percent.”
― Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World