Lords Of Finance
Liaquat Ahamed joins us this week at Book Club for a discussion of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke The World. An economic history of the liquidity crisis from 1914 through the Great Depression, Ahamed focuses on four central bankers and their larger-than-life personalities: Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Emile Moreau of Banque de France, Hjalmar Schacht of Reichsbank, and Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Lords of Finance details the four men's attempts to return the economy to the gold standard - and how a series of bad decisions brought the four major banks (and their respective economies) to the brink of collapse.
Ahamed's work is particularly relevant today - in a TPMTV interview last month, he compared the current regulatory environment to the one in place during the 1920s and 1930s.
Joining the discussion are James Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin; Sidney Blumenthal, former aide to President Clinton and Senior Fellow for the New York University Center on Law and Security; Julian Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University; Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City; Mark Thoma, Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon; and Nathan Newman, Policy Director for the Progressive Legislative Action Network.
A more expansive introduction and more detailed biographies of each of the announced participants is available here.
April 24, 2009 10:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, better look carefully into those bios....there could be another "racist" in our midst!
Hopefully, we will uncover a "racist" or two.....this will allow us to dismiss or ignore any and all arguments made by the "racists".
Then, we won't have to make any reasoned arguments ourselves against the "racists". And we will reveal our utter inability to make reasoned arguments in the first place!
Quick! Better find those "racists"!
April 25, 2009 3:09 AM | Reply | Permalink