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Title details for Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed - Available

Lords of Finance

The Bankers Who Broke the World

by Liaquat Ahamed
Stephen Hoye
Audiobook
1 of 2 copies available
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1 of 2 copies available
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 made 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.


In Lords of Finance, 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.


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 boomtown 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.


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, Lords of Finance 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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    April 27, 2009

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400191796
      • File size: 534443 KB
      • Duration: 18:33:25

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Even those who aren't generally interested in economics will enjoy this historical look at wealth and power in the early twentieth century. Four magnates, each with the power of his country's federal reserve, controlled the world's finances. Their dealings in regulating the cost of currency among their respective countries became influential in causing the Great Depression. Stephen Hoye hones in on the author's brutal use of satire in attacking the four lords' ascendancy. Since the story deals with England, France, Germany, and the United States, Hoye's multilingual talents add depth to the characters and their milieus, adding an extra reason to enjoy his performance. Brimming with subtle humor and abundant detail, this audiobook is smartly enhanced by the narrator's skill and will be enjoyed by connoisseurs of both history and economics. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 1, 2008
      If you think today's economy is scary, check out the Jazz Age horrors chronicled in this financial history of the interwar years and the central bankers who blighted them. Ahamed, an investment manager, surveys the economic upheavals of the 1920s and 1930s, when crushing war debts and reparations from WWI sparked hyperinflation in Germany and a host of lesser eruptions, all of it climaxing in the American stock market crash and the Great Depression. He tells the story through the central bank chiefs of Britain, France, Germany and the United States as they confront unprecedented crises while “shackled” by the “dead hand” of the gold standard, the era's reigning financial orthodoxy (economist John Maynard Keynes, foe of gold and apostle of economic activism, is the book's hero). The author injects unnecessary commentary about the bankers' neuroses and marital difficulties into his coverage of interest rate and currency fluctuations (New York Federal Reserve head Benjamin Strong, he notes, possessed a “large nose that spoke of ruthlessness”). Fortunately, his protagonists' high-wire efforts to stave off national bankruptcies furnish Ahamed with plenty of drama to highlight his engrossing analysis of the complexities of monetary policy. Photos.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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