Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed

"This is the story of the Great Depression as told through the lives of the central bankers who tried and failed to deal with the crisis. As one, Montagu Norman, reflected in retirement, “nothing that I did had...any effect at all except that we collected money from a lot of poor devils and gave it over to the four winds.” - The Economist

"With penetrating insights for today, this vital history of the world economic collapse of the late 1920s offers unforgettable portraits of the four men whose personal and professional actions as heads of their respective central banks changed the course of the twentieth century. 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...

"This is the story of the Great Depression as told through the lives of the central bankers who tried and failed to deal with the crisis. As one, Montagu Norman, reflected in retirement, “nothing that I did had...any effect at all except that we collected money from a lot of poor devils and gave it over to the four winds.” - The Economist

"With penetrating insights for today, this vital history of the world economic collapse of the late 1920s offers unforgettable portraits of the four men whose personal and professional actions as heads of their respective central banks changed the course of the twentieth century. 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 taken 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...