|  | Author: Liaquat Ahamed
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
List Price: $32.95
Buy New: $8.58
as of 11/24/2009 04:42 CST details
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New (74) Used (36) Collectible (2) from $6.57
Seller: excellent_values
Rating:  61 reviews
Sales Rank: 5549
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 576
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.4 x 2
ISBN: 159420182X
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.10922
EAN: 9781594201820
ASIN: 159420182X
Publication Date: January 22, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Remainder Mark. Ships within 24 hours, excellent packing, USPS domestic delivery confirmation.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 21-25 of 61
 A Good Read.. June 25, 2009
Alam W. Biesenkamp (Ravenna,OH USA)
Even if you have no interest in world finance, this book is very readable. Real people a fleshed out and shown as living persons, not cardboard characters that seem to be in most books about historical personages.
A new perspective on the Depression June 12, 2009
misterbeets (Safe Harbor, MD USA)
This book begins with World War I, because this event marks the beginning of the unraveling of the economic system; this breakdown ultimately resulted in the Depression.
In Europe, Germany, following defeat, was burdened with unrealistic demands for reparations, initially seven times its annual GDP. Both England and France borrowed substantial sums from the US to pay for the war, struggled to repay them, and never did.
In the relatively prosperous US, the stock boom of the Twenties resulted in the inevitable collapse. Over the next two years the inexperienced Fed allowed a banking crisis to develop from it, culminating in a full-fledged panic by the time Roosevelt was inaugurated.
With Europe weakened and the US in disarray, and the constraints imposed by the world's outdated belief in the virtues of the gold standard, in the early Thirties trade and capital flow ground to a halt, at least until the mid-Thirties, when countries abandoned gold and began monetary efforts to resurrect their economies, as Keynes had always recommended.
Relevant to Today's Financial Crisis June 4, 2009
Thomas Grover (Naples, Florida)
If you have an interest in World Financial History you will love this book. It is the story of 4 intelligent and learned Central Bankers who, while trying to do the right things to avoid inflation, made mistakes that ultimately proved disastrous and sped the world economy towards the Great Depression.
The current world financial crisis and the fear of ultimate inflation that many of today's leaders are expressing, can be better understood and with greater insight, once you have read this book.
 Misleading subtitle; Inadequate explanations May 28, 2009
Bruce Stern (San Rafael, CA USA)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
As a biography of four of the government bankers instrumental in the economic affairs of world finance in the post-World War I era and the 1920s, 'Lords of Finance' contributes to our understanding of events leading to the world's Great Depression of the 1930s.
As an explanation of how these flawed men 'broke the world' this book doesn't provide clear answers. This story is a reminder that open-mindedness, ego-control, and big-picture vision of the individuals conducting the affairs of nations throughout history is critical to the success or failure of nations (and the too often unseen individuals inhabiting these nations).
The effects of one nation's actions upon its own economy, on the economies of other nations, and the practicalities of the gold standard, the operating monetary system of this era, are inadequate.
Such a book requires considerably more explanations (and even repeatedly so) about the gold standard--what it is, how it effects a nation's economics and international economic policy and practices, and how when one nation's economy changes how that effects one nation's economic practices and that nation's economic relationships with other nations.
I learned something of the problems, crises, politics and economics of the inter-war period of western Europe and the U.S., but the story failed to cohere until the Epilogue, beginning on page 497 of the 508 page story. The bulk of the book was made up of many parts that just didn't coalesce.
I would recommend this book more to someone knowledgeable about economics, and international monetary policy and practices, but not to someone with little or no knowledge of such matters.
 timely read May 27, 2009
Louis
When I saw this book in the store I thought it was about current events. Turned out to be about the Great Depression, but it definitely speaks to our own times.
The author does a great job of making sense of a huge amount of information about the mistakes that led up to the depression. There's a lot of material here, but it's presented in a way that makes total sense.
Sometimes I think that some of the complexities get lost a little bit. Maybe he makes too much of the impact of the gold standard, for instance.
Still, it's amazing to realize how just a small number of decisions and people had such a big impact on everyone. I recommend the book for anyone interested in financial disasters and how they happen.
Showing reviews 21-25 of 61
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