- ISBN13: 9780143116806
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
“A magisterial work…You can’t help thinking about the economic crisis we’re living through now.” –The New York Times Book Review
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 that economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades. As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, Lords of Finance is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, their fallibility, and the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Exclusive: Liaquat Ahamed on the Economic Climate
In December 1930, the great economist Maynard Keynes published an article in which he described the world as living in “the shadows of one of the greatest economic catastrophes in modern history.” The world was then 18 months into what would become the Great Depression. The stock market was down about 60%, profits had fallen in half and unemployed had climbed from 4% to about 10%.
If you take our present situation, 16 months into the current recession, we’re about at the same place. The stock market is down 50 to 60 percent, profits are down 50 percent, unemployment is up from 4.5% to over 8%.
Over the next 18 months between January 1930 and July 1932 the bottom fell out of the world economy. It did so because the authorities applied the wrong medicine to what was a very sick economy. They let the banking system go under, they tried to cut the budget deficit by curbing government expenditure and raising taxes, they refused to assist the European banking system, and they even raised interest rates. It was no wonder the global economy crumbled.
Luckily with the benefit of those lessons, we now know what not to do. This time the authorities are applying the right medicine: they have cut interest rates to zero and are keeping them there, they have saved the banking system from collapse and they have introduced the largest stimulus package in history.
And yet I cannot help worrying that the world economy may yet spiral downwards. There are two areas in particular that keep me up at night.
The first is the U.S. banking system. Back in the fall, the authorities managed to prevent a financial meltdown. People are not pulling money out of banks anymore—in fact, they are putting money in. The problem is that as a consequence of past bad loans, the banking system has lost a good part of its capital. There is no way that the economy can recover unless the banking system is recapitalized. While there are many technical issues about the best way to do this, most experts agree that it will not be done without a massive injection of public money, possibly as much as $1 trillion from you and me, the taxpayer.
At the moment tax payers are so furious at the irresponsibility of the bankers who got us into this mess that they are in no mood to support yet more money to bail out banks. It is going to take an extraordinary act of political leadership to persuade the American public that unfortunately more money is necessary to solve this crisis.
The second area that keeps me up at night is Europe. During the real estate bubble years, the 13 countries of Eastern Europe that were once part of the Soviet empire had their own bubble. They now owe a gigantic $1.3 trillion dollars, much of which they won’t be able to pay. The burden will have to fall on the tax payers of Western Europe, especially Germany and France.
In the U.S. we at least have the national cohesion and the political machinery to get New Yorkers and Midwesterners to pay for the mistakes of Californian and Floridian homeowners or to bail out a bank based in North Carolina. There is no such mechanism in Europe. It is going to require political leadership of the highest order from the leaders of Germany and France to persuade their thrifty and prudent taxpayers to bail out foolhardy Austrian banks or Hungarian homeowners.
The Great Depression was largely caused by a failure of intellectual will—the men in charge simply did not understand how the economy worked. The risk this time round is that a failure of political will leads us into an economic cataclysm.
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World
A great way to learn about the gold standard and other financial aspects of this period. But it is still kind of dry.
Rating: 3 / 5
Liaquat Ahamed is a fraud, a puppet of the bankers. If he knew anything about history and the current crisis he’s know that bailouts are the last thing this country needs to save it’s self. He would know that the only way to end this is to END THE FED!
Thomas Jefferson said,
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
James Madison said,
“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.”
Woodrow Wilson said,
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”
[...]
Rating: 1 / 5
Is kindle bait and switch? I boughtt it on the promise that books would be much cheaper as there would be little in production costs. This book and others now cost as much as hard cover. I feel like i am being ripped off. You have market power. Use it for your kindle customers.
Rating: 4 / 5
John Maynard Keynes? Is he kidding me? First of all there were massive injections in the banking system which banks on hand denied these due to fear of inflation. Secondly Hoover created the biggest spending programs which Roosevelt continued, Henry Morgenthau (Roosevelts Secretary of Treasury) said that the administration has tried spending money and that it does not work. As an economist and a mathematician myself Keynesian economics is seriously flawed. 1.) You cannot inject a massive amount of fiscal money into the economy without there being a higher level of taxation which will inturn cause (liquidity traps) Keynes words. These will in turn induce a much lower demand because of the adjustment of consumers to taxation “making the recession/depression worst” 2.) If inflation is the way aka the Phillips Curve it does not account for the velocity of money that will cause higher prices while inventory remains limited, giving this money to the unemployed to spend will not induce demand but instead induce savings and demand on the most basic of items. I don’t necessarily think an unemployed person will by a Versace handbag. Both of these ideologies have been firmly repudiated by history, econometrics, and economics period. Not to mention the depression lasted so long because of the forced artifcial wage increase due to the decreasing inventories which induced more unemployment and the Smoot Hawley Tariff bill which crushed trade and caused further unemployment. This is another propagandist book aimed at telling lies. The depression lasted so long because both Hoover and Roosevelt intervened and halted a much faster adjustment along the growth trend line from recession to recovery. The current myth is that Hoover was a Laissez Faire president who did nothing and Roosevelt came on his mystical white welfare horse and rescued the day with his economic programs coming back to haunt us today like Social Security and the other entitlement programs. This author again negates numbers and statistics for pure theatrical story telling. Both presidents introduced more regulations and spending that hampered actual recovery like the recovery of 1920-1921 which was a pure market recovery and faster because prices corrected themselves at a faster pace which meant the recovery could begin sooner. Truth be told Hoover and Roosevelt spent more money and introduced so many regulations that actually crushed what Free-Market existed it would make Obama blush. Do not purchase this book if you’re interested in FACTS
Rating: 1 / 5
The book is worth reading just to get one perspective of times in that era but DO NOT use it as a source of factual information. The author writes as someone who is either blinded by his life in the same world as his subjects, i.e., high finance and basically making money not by really doing anything constructive but by playing with the hard work of the masses or someone unwilling to mention the pink elephant in the room. Many statements in the book identify either a lack of research beyond a few general sources from that time or a lack of interest in actually telling the reader how manipulative the central bankers were and have remained since 1913.
Classic examples include:
pg 15 “These bubbles and crises seem to be deep-rooted in human nature and inherent to the capitalist system.” – with approriate research every bubble can be attributed to manipulation by one or a small group of greedy, self-serving individuals.
pg. 42 “The collapse of stock values in the last week of July put several banks in Germany in difficulties — the Norddeutsche Handelsbank, one of the largest banks in Hanover, had to close its doors– and was accompanied by the usual litany of suicides by overextended financiers.” – I find it interesting that the loss of money results in a de facto response of suicide among “so many” in the financial/banking community whereas bankruptcy among the masses is so common place that we should be seeing way more suicides than we do. Might I toss out a theory that those bankers who commit suicide are actually fearful of their shame and the wrath of those they swindled, more than just the loss of their banks money?
pg 48 (regarding america’s entry into WW I) “Although no one saw even a remote liklihood that the United States would become involved, it was widely feared that as the biggest importer of capital in the world, it would be badly hurt by a shutdown of international credit” – Oh yeah, J.P. Morgan and Benjamin Strong were totally oblivious to what was happening and what was going to happen regarding the war. This statement shows either an incredible naivete on the authors part or a purposeful deceit on the unknowing reader (I’d pick the latter).
If you want a much better read on the history of the time and how we got here read Ellen Brown’s Web of Debt!
Rating: 2 / 5