John Lanchester of The New Yorker magazine writes:

"The sheer frictionlessness with which money moves around the world is frightening; it can induce a kind of vertigo. This can happen when you are reading the financial news and suddenly feel that you have no grip on what the numbers actually mean--what those millions and billions and trillions actually represent, how to get hold of them in your mind. (Try the following thought experiment, suggested by the mathematician John Allen Paulos, in his book "Innumeracy": Without doing the calculation, guess how long a million seconds is. Now try to guess the same for a billion seconds. Ready? A million seconds is less than twelve days; a billion is almost thirty-two years.) Or it can happen when you look at a bank statement and contemplate the terrible potency of those strings of digits, their ability to dictate everything from what you eat to where you live--the abstract numerals whose consequences are the least abstract thing in the world. Or it can happen when the global flow of capital suddenly hits you personally--when your apparently thriving employer goes out of business owing to a problem with credit, or your mortgage payments jump unpayably upward--and you think, Just what is this money stuff, anyway? I can see its effects--I can thumb a banknote, flip a coin--but what is it, actually? What do these abstract numbers stand for? What is the thing that's being represented? Wouldn't it be reassuring if it was more like a physical thing, and less like an idea? Wouldn't the global financial system be less vertiginous, less bizarre, if your money actually stood for something?

The answer to that question is no, and we know this because the system was in effect for years and--to borrow a phrase from the subtitle of Liaquat Ahamed's new book, "Lords of Finance" (Penguin; $32.95)--it "broke the world." The system was the gold standard, and it involved the world's major currencies being pegged against gold in a way that was, in theory, redeemable: that is, you could go to the bank and exchange your currency for a specified amount of gold. In the United States, it was 23.22 grains of gold to the dollar; in the United Kingdom, it was 113 grains to the pound sterling. (A grain is based on the notional weight of a grain of wheat: 1/7,000 of a pound.) By fixing currencies to gold, the gold standard also fixed them to each other. In addition, the central banks, which had a monopoly on printing and distributing money, were obliged by law to keep the amount of money in circulation linked to the amount of gold in their reserves. This was not just a local issue but a planetary one. Even the most vertigo-prone of us, those who are least comfortable with the abstractness of modern money, can begin to spot a problem here: what if the world needs more money? What if all the gold is in the wrong place, or there isn't enough of it?"

Michael M. Thomas of Forbes compared Ahamed's book to a much earlier volume with a similar subject and name:

On and off, over the past couple of weeks, I have been dipping into Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. It is a book that has received high praise, and in my opinion rightly so; its narrative pull, its elegant writing, the deft and thorough research that underpins it and its strength of characterization delineate a fascinating dramatis personae.

All of these, however, support a thesis I subsequently wonder about, which is that the Crash and Great Depression of 1929-40 were mainly rooted in the actions taken over the previous dozen years by a quartet of central bankers: Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England's Montagu Norman, Emile Moreau of the Banque de France and the Reichsbank's Hjalmar Schacht.

When I first heard of Ahamed's book, I was immediately struck by the similarity of the title he had chosen to Frederick Lewis Allen's Lords of Creation, a book I had taken considerable pains to acquire, finally hunting down a copy in a Connecticut bookshop (this was long before the book business went online), a decade after I started searching. It reposed on my shelves some dozen years, scarcely read. I thought it might make an interesting pendant to Ahamed's work, so I got it down.

The jacket copy describes Allen's Lords as "a history of the evolution of financial power in the United States since 1900." It was published in 1935, when the Great Depression was well settled on the nation and the world, which meant that Allen, a diligent and perceptive reporter who had made his fame only four years earlier with Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, was in the later chapters of his book reporting first-hand from the trenches.

One thing his work was bound to honestly reflect was the understanding of his day and age as to what in tarnation had happened in 1929, thereafter and why. So I turned at once to the index to see what Allen might have to say about the causal part played by Ahamed's "Fearsome Foursome" in making the Western World vulnerable to the all-devouring slump.

To my astonishment, three of the four (Norman, Schacht and Moreau) don't even appear! Benjamin Strong does, briefly, but only much, much earlier as a gofer for Pierpont Morgan. Clearly then, the 1930s financial world's grasp of itself and the mess it had made did not attribute any significant role to the failings of its central banks and central bankers according to Frederick Lewis Allen.

Does this invalidate Ahamed's thesis? Not in the least. All it tells us is how commodious history can be, how many threads make up the figure in the carpet. Many years ago, in his account of the Penn Square-Continental Illinois banking collapse of 1982, New Yorker writer Mark Singer made the wise observation that a really first-rate financial crisis requires a perfect conjunction of folly, like four cars driven simultaneously at top speed through four stop signs into an intersection.

What Ahamed and Allen show us is how it takes two--probably more--to tango. Central banks would not loom large on the American radar until Marriner Eccles took over the Fed in 1934 and whole-heartedly put his new dispensation in the service of the economy as opposed to its historical practice of protecting the price of Fort Knox gold, thereby launching a line of succession that would culminate in the monstrous ego of Alan Greenspan. Yet, even as our own busy bees on change were up to their mischief with margin loans and pyramid schemes, so too--below our self-centered horizon--were Strong, Norman etc. so that when the end came, it really was rather like that verse from "The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay," a poem I memorized in sixth grade: "All at once, and nothing first, just as bubbles do when they burst."

Janet Maslin of the New York Times' "Books of the Times" wrote:

Liaquat Ahamed's "Lords of Finance" is supposed to be a history book about the economics of World War I and the Great Depression. But there is terrific prescience to be found in its portrait of times past. Mr. Ahamed, an investment manager who proves to be a writer of great verve and erudition, easily connects the dots between the economic crises that rocked the world during the years his book covers and the fiscal emergencies that beset us today. He does this winningly enough to make his book about an international monetary horror story seem like a labor of love.

The reader who might not expect to be enthralled by the dangerous mutability of the gold standard, for example, will find it a subject of real fascination. And Mr. Ahamed does a superlative job of explaining the ever-germane way the problems of one shyster, one bank, one treasury or one economy can set off repercussions all around the globe.

Although "Lords of Finance" is much more than a personality-driven book, it has personalities to spare. The four men and their distinctive strategies are wonderfully drawn. If only by virtue of the velvet-collared cape and fan-backed oriental chair he used as accoutrements at a top-secret 1927 meeting on Long Island, Montagu Norman of the Bank of England emerges as this book's most exotic figure. The meeting led the Federal Reserve System of the United States to cut interest rates by half a percentage point to prop up the British pound. That it might have been "the pivotal moment, the turning point that set in train the fateful sequence of events that would eventually lead the world into depression," is in no way trivialized by Mr. Ahamed's emphasis on Norman's peculiar personal style.

Liaquat Ahamed (according to his author profile at his publisher, Penguin Books USA,) "has been a professional investment manager for 25 years. He has worked at the World Bank in Washington D.C. and the New York based partnership of Fischer Francis Trees and Watts, where he served as Chief Executive. He is currently an adviser to several hedge fund groups, including the Rock Creek Group and the Rohatyn Group, is a compensated director of Aspen Insurance Co. (details available at Forbes.com) and is on the board of Trustees of the Brookings Institution. He has degrees in economics from Harvard and Cambridge Universities."

Maslin's review continues:

"Lords of Finance" has the flair and wisdom to find a wide readership on the strength of its main ideas. Even better, the book has added assets. It is written by a man so conversant with his material that he appreciates all its nuances, large and small. Among the minor highlights of this eminently readable story are some of the shadier scam artists whom history has all but forgotten (like Marthe Hanau, a spendthrift French divorcee who in the 1920s swindled hundreds of thousands of thrifty, small-town French investors by promoting flimsy stocks, and who always traveled with two limousines, in case one broke down). Then there are the aristocrats: when Mr. Ahamed has the chance to drop a name as memorable as Vere Brabazon Ponsonby, ninth Earl of Bessborough, he most assuredly will.

This book's culture clashes are every bit as memorable as its eerie prefigurings of the present financial meltdowns. It is in a spirit of true affection, rather than in an effort to leaven the mysteries of global economic synergy, that Mr. Ahamed cites one American politician particularly ill suited for a visit to Windsor Castle.

"King, I'm glad to meet you," declared Senator Key Pittman of Nevada, who was nominally in England to discuss the remonetization of silver. As if this were not reason enough for him to have stayed home, "one night he was discovered by floor waiters at Claridges sitting stark naked in the sink of the hotel pantry, pretending to be a statue in a fountain."

Also participating in this discussion are:

James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin;

Galbraith is the author of six books and several hundred scholarly and policy articles. His most recent book, "Unbearable Cost: Bush, Greenspan and the Economics of Empire, was published by Palgrave-MacMillan in late 2006. His next book will be "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too," forthcoming from The Free Press. Inequality and Industrial Change: A Global View (Cambridge University Press, 2001), is coedited with Maureen Berner and features contributions from six LBJ School Ph.D. students. Created Unequal: The Crisis in American Pay, was published by the Free Press in August 1998.

Galbraith maintains several outside connections, including serving as a Senior Scholar of the Levy Economics Institute (www.levy.org) and as chair of Economists for Peace and Security (www.epsusa.org). He also writes a column on economic and political issues for Mother Jones, and contributes occasionally to The American Prospect, The Nation, the Texas Observer and to the op-ed pages of the major newspapers.

Galbraith teaches economics and a variety of other subjects at the LBJ School and UT Austin's Department of Government. He holds degrees from Harvard and Yale (Ph.D. in Economics, 1981). He studied economics as a Marshall Scholar at King's College, Cambridge, and later served on the staff of the U.S. Congress, including as Executive Director of the Joint Economic Committee, before joining the faculty of the University of Texas. He held a Fulbright Distinguished Visiting Lectureship in China in the summer of 2001, and was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2003. His recent research has focused on the measurement and understanding of inequality in the world economy, while his policy writing ranges from monetary policy to the economics of warfare, with forays into politics and history. Visit the web-site of the University of Texas Inequality Project (UTIP) for current research and an archive of published writings.

Sidney Blumenthal, former aide to President Clinton and Senior Fellow for the New York University Center on Law and Security. he is a widely published journalist, especially on American politics and foreign policy.

Born in Chicago, he earned a BA in sociology from Brandeis University in 1969 and started his career in Boston as a journalist who wrote for The New Republic. Over a career of twenty years, he became editor of several departments and wrote for several publications including Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. In recent publications he has been critical of the Republican administration under George W Bush

Following the end of the Clinton presidency, Blumenthal subsequently wrote a book titled The Clinton Wars published in 2003. The book includes a small biography of Blumenthal, but focuses on his years with the Clintons and in the White House. Other books by Blumenthal include The Permanent Campaign, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment, Pledging Allegiance: The Last Campaign of the Cold War, and How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime.

Blumenthal was recently the Washington bureau chief for Salon.com, for which he has written over 1800 pieces online. He is also a regular contributor to openDemocracy.net, as well as being a regular columnist for the UK newspaper, The Guardian. Blumenthal joined the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign as a "senior advisor" in November 2007. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Julian E. Zelizer is Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Zelizer, who grew up in Metuchen, N.J., received his B.A. at Brandeis University and Ph.D. at The Johns Hopkins University. He is one of the leading figures in the field of American political history and a well known public intellectual. Professor Zelizer is the author and editor of numerous books that examine U.S. political leaders, policies, and institutions since the New Deal. He is currently finishing work on four books: a history of national security politics since WWII, a history of the Jimmy Carter presidency, a history of the Reagan Revolution, and an edited volume about the George W. Bush presidency. Professor Zelizer is a well-known commentator in the national and international television, radio, and print media. He was featured on a show by the History Channel, Great Moments on the Campaign Trail, which was awarded an Emmy in 2008. He is a regular contributor to CNN.Com, Politico, The Huffington Post, and the Washington Independent. He has also published in Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and The American Prospect. Professor Zelizer lives in Princeton, N.J.

L. Randall Wray is a Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City as well as Research Director, the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability (at UMKC), and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, NY. He is a past president of the Association for Institutionalist Thought (AFIT) and served on the board of directors of the Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE). A student of Hyman P. Minsky while at Washington University in St. Louis, Wray has focused on monetary theory and policy, macroeconomics, financial instability, and employment policy. He has published widely in journals and is the author of Understanding Modern Money: The Key to Full Employment and Price Stability (Elgar, 1998) and Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies (Elgar 1990). He is the editor of Credit and State Theories of Money (Edward Elgar 2004) and the co-editor of Contemporary Post Keynesian Analysis (Edward Elgar 2005) and Money, Financial Instability and Stabilization Policy (Edward Elgar 2006). Wray is also the author of numerous scholarly articles in edited books and academic journals, including the Journal of Economic Issues, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Review of Political Economy, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Economic and Labour Relations Review, Economie Appliquée, and the Eastern Economic Journal. He was the Bernardin-Haskell Professor, UMKC, Fall 1996, and joined the UMKC faculty as Professor of Economics, August 1999. Wray received a B.A. from the University of the Pacific and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis.

Mark Thoma, Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon; and author of the popular blog "Economist's View". Thoma received his Ph.D. from Washington State University in 1985 focusing on macroeconomic theory and applied econometrics. He is the author of numerous academic papers and has also written for a variety publications including, "How Much Do Election Shakeups Affect the Nation's Economy?" for the Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2006, "Is Income Inequality Rising?" for Cato Unbound, the Cato Institute, February 2007, and "Financial Market Variables Do Not Predict Real Activity, for Economic Inquiry, Vol. 36, No.4, October 1998, (coauthored with Jo Anna Gray).

Nathan Newman is Policy Director for the Progressive Legislative Action Network, and a regular columnist for The Progressive Populist and author of the book, NET LOSS: Internet Prophets, Private Profits and the Costs to Communitypublished by Penn State Press in 2002. I've also managed to pick up a Ph.D. in Sociology at Berkeley and a law degree from Yale along the way. He currently lives in Harlem in New York City.

He has written numerous articles and reports on the economy, politics and technology, with minor media celebrity at points, from being quoted in the New York Times, WiredNews and The Nation to appearing on C-SPAN and WebTV. His book Net Loss, based on his Ph.D. research, details the role of government policy in shaping the Internet and regional economies and how the rise of the networked economy has increased inequality in our society.

His labor experience dates back to working as a staff organizer in Las Vegas for the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees (HERE) International Union starting in 1988, then serving on the Executive Board of UC-Berkeley's Association of Graduate Student Employees (AGSE/UAW) in the early 90s, serving as an appointee to the Berkeley City Labor Commission for a number of years, organizing a labor-environmental network (the California Network for a New Economy), organizing community support for labor struggles in Northern California, and serving in the national legal department of the Communication Workers of America. This past year he worked in a union-side labor firm in New York City. He now works as a policy analyst and lawyer in a non-profit here in New York.