Liaquat Ahamed has been a professional investment manager for 25 years. He has worked at the World Bank in Washington D.C. and the New York based partnership of Fischer Francis Trees and Watts, where he served as Chief Executive. He is currently an adviser to several hedge fund groups, including the Rock Creek Group and the Rohatyn Group, is a director of Aspen Insurance Co. and is on the board of Trustees of the Brookings Institution. He has degrees in economics from Harvard and Cambridge Universities.
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. (Jan.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
In this historical study, Ahamed, a professional money manager, sums up the causes of the Great Depression as a series of economic policy blunders that could have been avoided. He cites as causal factors the inflationary financing of World War I by printing money, the insurmountable war debts of Germany and the Allies, Germany's plunge into hyperinflation, and the return of most currencies to the gold standard at excessive and deflationary prewar rates. For example, he explains that when the U.S. stock market bubble burst in 1929 and economic activity collapsed, the central banks were restrained in stimulating the economy for fear of losing their gold reserves. In an epilog, Ahamed draws parallels between the crises of the Great Depression and those in recent times. He keeps his history interesting by highlighting the personalities of the heads of the major central banks, and he employs the economist John Maynard Keynes as a one-man Greek chorus critiquing the bankers' actions. This erudite and exceedingly well-written tale of financial chaos in the 1920s and 1930s is both timely and instructive for today's economic climate. Highly recommended for all academic and most public libraries.-Lawrence Maxted, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
"A magisterial work...As you learn how the world spiraled into
depression...you can't help thinking about the economic crisis
we're living through now."-The New York Times Book Review
"The rich and charming story of the end of the
world."-Time
"Lords of Finance is highly readable .... That it should
appear now, as history threatens to repeat itself, compounds its
appeal."-Niall Ferguson, Financial Times
"There is terrific prescience to be found in [Lords of
Finance's] portrait of times past...[A] writer of great verve
and erudition, [Ahamed] easily connects the dots between the
economic crises that rocked the world during the years his book
covers and the fiscal emergencies that beset us today. He does this
winningly enough to make his book about an international monetary
horror story seem like a labor of love... Mr. Ahamed does a
superlative job of explaining the ever-germane way the problems of
one shyster, one bank, one treasury or one economy can set off
repercussions all around the globe."-Janet Maslin, The New
York Times
"This absorbing study of the first collective of central bankers is
provocative, not least because it is still relevant."-The
Economist
"This is narrative history at its most vivid, an epic portrait of
how the predecessors of Ben Bernanke, Jean-Claude Trichet and
Mervyn King helped shove economies into the abyss in 1929...His
reportorial style has the Barbara Tuchman touch. Learned yet
unpretentious, he dips into diaries, letters and cables to pull out
evocative vignettes...Central bankers, [Ahamed] says, can resemble
Sisyphus in Greek mythology- condemned to roll a boulder up a hill,
only to watch it roll down again. Like Alan Greenspan, the four men
described here saw their apparent successes melt into
failure."-Bloomberg News
"The parallels evidenced by Ahamed between state of the world
financial system then and now add to the fascination of this
remarkable achievement in history, biography and
analysis."-Fort Worth Star Telegram
"An outstanding book...[Ahamed] found a fascinating frame for
relating global economic history from the beginning of World War I
until the dying days of World War II."-The Houston
Chronicle
"[Ahamed's] 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."-Publishers Weekly
"Erudite, entertaining macroeconomic history of the lead-up to the
Great Depression as seen through the careers of the West's
principal bankers...Spellbinding, insightful and, perhaps most
important, timely."-Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"Books grounded in history sometimes offer an eerie resonance for
contemporary readers. Rarely has that statement seemed truer than
with Lords of Finance."- Steve Weinberger, Dallas
Morning News
"[A] wonderful new
history"-Newsweek
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
