Awards

• Shortlisted for BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2009.
• Winner of Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award 2010
• Winner of Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award 2010.
• Winner of Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2009
• Winner of Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2009.
• Winner of Pulitzer Prize for History 2010.
• Winner of Spear's Book Awards: Financial History Book of the Year 2009.

Overview

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 Emile 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 facade 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.

Full Product Details

9781400111794

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Reviews

Brimming with subtle humor and abundant detail, this audiobook is smartly enhanced by the narrator's skill. ---AudioFile

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. ---The New York Times

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. ---The New York Times

Author Information

Liaquat Ahamed has been a professional investment manager for twenty-five years and is currently an adviser to several hedge fund groups, including the Rock Creek Group and the Rohatyn Group. Actor Stephen Hoye is a graduate of London's Guildhall and a veteran of London's West End. An award-winning audiobook narrator, he has won thirteen AudioFile Earphones Awards and two prestigious APA Audie Awards.

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