Lords of Finance

The Bankers Who Broke the World

By: Liaquat Ahamed

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

Length: 18 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

Pulitzer Prize, History, 2010

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 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 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.

©2009 Liaquat Ahamed (P)2009 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Ahamed cannot have foreseen how timely his book would be..... Lords of Finance is highly readable - enlivened by vivid biographical detail but soundly based on the literature. That it should appear now, as history threatens to repeat itself, compounds its appeal." ( Financial Times)
"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)

Excellent for those who think about such matters

What made the experience of listening to Lords of Finance the most enjoyable?

I learned a great deal about the men who handled the controls of world finance through the Roaring 20's into the Great Depression.

Any additional comments?

For those who think such matters are simple, this book should correct their misunderstanding. It followed nicely on my old Economics, Money & Banking classes in the late '60s.

It's always about the Economy

Too many history books give short shrift to the role of finances on the course of history. This book fills in a major plot hole about what went on between the two world wars. Ahamed does a great job of giving us a play-by-play of how the major central banks attempted to respond to events, including a clear picture of how the decision making process was affected by individual personalities and legacy dogma from the past. I wish the author had interspersed more of his analysis with the main text instead of saving it for the end. Ahamed builds a strong case that the gold standard was a key factor leading to dysfunctional decisions. As far as building a case that these bankers bungled their jobs, he would do better if he could come up with decisions that would have led to a better outcome. As it is, he shows people boxed in by circumstances beyond their control. In most of the situations he goes over, it appears they made the best choice available to them, and that in itself makes for a compelling if tragic story.

In fact, I wish more time had been spent on analysis overall. An economics book targeted at the mainstream audience should at least spend more time explaining about the balance of payments, and about how the trading in government securities affects trade in the private sector. But these are relatively minor complaints.

Stephen Hoye is not my favorite narrator. He has one of those superior sounding voices that imply he knows what he's talking about. I understand some people find that reassuring. If hearing someone read a book on economics and referring to "John Maynard KEENZ" all the way through doesn't bother you, then maybe you won't mind Mr. Hoye's narration. I found the British accent annoying, as he used the same one for every British person in the story, from Churchill to Keynes. Yet the other nationalities were either very mild or nonexistent as far as accents go.

an economic "memento mori" - wondrous educational

Four bankers whom time forgot, each damaged in a unique manner, together reflecting the conventional wisdom of the day and a token smattering of unruly disorder: the book tells the story of the Depression, the interwar period, and the desperate efforts of a small gang of men determined to do well by their countries with what tools economics then made available.

Lords of Finance should be mandatory reading for those bewitched by the wisdom of any era, a humbling testament to celebrity worship of "great, wise old men" - who bumbling, groping, did the best they can in a complex world. The heady economic analysis paints the precise uncertainties with which they grappled, while the human victories and tragedies convey a fair sense of the men doing the grappling.

Schacht, arrogant and disgraced, emerges as a financial wizard from the broom closet to rescue Germany from hyperinflation (or to claim credit for so doing). Strong, plucked from an auspicious morning trade route to work to the heights of power, then crushed. Norman, painted as eccentric by his incapacity for public performance. And Moreau, saddled with a corrupt mentor, striving to buy time for a France no longer capable of challenging the world. Each played his part in the ensemble, and Ahamed makes a good case for their relevance - but this story of humanized economics as lived, mistakes as realized, and mixed foresight and blindness serves today's readers well - not as a warning about any specific failing, but as a humbling exercise - a "memento mori" for modernity.

Highly recommended.

Highly informative

Excellent historical background and fascinating details about the major financial decision makers leading up to and through the Great Depression. Last chapter ties it all together by briefly comparing aspects of the crisis with more current financial catastrophes.

Significant

This is a good book that sheds good light on global financial dynamics.

The author has done a marvellous job aside his tendency to run farther ahead of the contextual time and to bring in side gists as well.

I love the book.

Great book, terrible accents!

This is a terrific book, very timely and amazingly relevant for anyone with any interest in the world of finance, monetary policy, or international economics. Readers should be warned that it is slow going for even the best readers, but it is not an academic text and once you get into it it is hard to stop listening. It is really a book about the four major central bankers of the interwar era and it is not a treatise about the evils of finance. The central dilemma of the book is actually the debt generated by WWI and the return to the gold standard and its economic consequences for Europe and the United States. It is a great illustration of the need to study and understand economic history in order to understand our world.

My biggest problem getting involved with the book was that it is so dense i needed to keep going back to the beginning to keep track of the different stories and personages. I am a very good reader but I must have restarted the book on three separate occasions....it is not a light read.

That said, once I did get involved I could not put the book down and following it became a good deal easier. I highly recommend sticking it as it is so timely and relevant to the issues of our day.

Lastly, I rated the performance only four stars despite Stephen Hoye's talent as a reader for a very complex text. His narration in many ways is one of the attractions of the book, which could have been read very badly or at the wrong speed or without understanding of concepts of economics and monetary policy that would have made listening impossible. My problem was that throughout the book he uses a very bad British accent when speaking the words of a British personage and inconsistently uses a slight German accent for the German banker. This is not a novel with dialogue. Not only does this affectation not serve the text, it actually detracts from the reading and disturbed the flow of the narration. Luckily he doesn't put on a French accent for the Frenchmen but the whole accent thing was badly done and totally unneeded. Otherwise the performance was excellent.

Great narration adds to great story

The narration uses a 1920's and 1930's American radio announcer voice that is perfect for this story. The humor is delivered deadpan.

Excellent

Probably the best thorough analysis of understanding exactly what the "Gold Standard " exactly is & how it proves as equally unnecessary & crippling to the growth of an economy. It left central banks in a catch 22 trying to manage economy; Lower interest rates too low = Gold would leave the country which would also lower the money supply (because money supply could only be a percentage of a nation's gold reserves) OR Raise interest rates too high to attract gold reserves & now the economy would be crippled by high interest rates. This book drives home how the gold standard was a great way to begin to build confidence in paper currency but eventually after a civilization trusts their currency & grows the gold standard inhibits the proper & required monetary policies used today that have proven much more generously effective.

History, history, history

I think people should be looking back more in history. See how the word’s financial system has collapsed before. What triggered this and what was the sort of way out.

a must read for all

for anybody interested in finance, monetary policy, and the great Depression, this book is well written and quite insightful.