Lords of Finance: 1929, The Great Depression - and the Bankers Who Broke the World - Hardcover

Many of us take it as a given that the Great Depression - the consequences of which reverberated for decades, crippling the future of an entire generation and setting the stage for WWII - resulted from a confluence of inexorable forces beyond any one person or government's control. In fact, as erudite economist Liaquat Ahamed explains, it was the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown. "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 the dynamic Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. These four men were as prominent in their time as Alan Greenspan, Hank Paulson and Mervyn King are today, but their names were lost to history, their story untold, until now.Harnessing a keen sense of history and the narrative skills of the novelist, Liaquat Ahamed tells their story in vivid and gripping detail. 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 origins and global nature of financial crises, "Lords of Finance" a timely and arresting reminder that individuals - their ambitions, limitations and human nature - lie at the very heart of global catastrophe.

With degrees in economics from the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard, Liaquat Ahamed has witnessed at close hand the way countrys' economic policy is made and executed as a professional economist at the World Bank during the 1980s. He has since worked as an investment manager, with a ring-side seat at a sequence of financial crises, from the collapse of the European Monetary System in the 1990s to the current 'sub-prime' economic downturn. This is his first book.