Lords of Finance

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

Hardcover edition
Author	Liaquat Ahamed
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	History/U.S. History
Genre	Non-fiction
Published	January 22, 2009 Penguin Press
Media type	Print, e-book
Pages	576 pages
ISBN

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World is a nonfiction book by Liaquat Ahamed about events leading up to and culminating in the Great Depression as told through the personal histories of the heads of the Central Banks of the world's four major economies at the time: Benjamin Strong Jr. of the New York Federal Reserve, Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Émile Moreau of the Banque de France, and Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank. The text was published on January 22, 2009 by Penguin Press. The book was generally well received by critics and won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for History. Because the book was published during the midst of the financial crisis of 2007–2010, the book subject matter was seen as very relevant to current financial events.

The book discusses the personal histories of the four heads of the Central Banks of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany, and their efforts to steer the world economy from the period during the First World War until the Great Depression. The book also discusses at length the career of the British economist John Maynard Keynes who criticized many of the policies of the heads of the Central Banks during this time.

One of the main themes of the book is the role played by the central bankers' insistence to adhere to the gold standard "even in the face of total catastrophe." As Joe Nocera, a book reviewer at the New York Times, stated, "the central bankers were prisoners of the economic orthodoxy of their time: the powerful belief that sound monetary policy had to revolve around the gold standard...Again and again, this straitjacket caused the central bankers — especially Norman, gold’s most fervent advocate — to make moves, like raising interest rates, that would allow their countries to hold on to their dwindling gold supplies, even though the larger economy desperately needed help in the form of lower interest rates."