Liaquat Ahamed 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 director of Aspen Insurance Co. and is on the board of Trustees of the Brookings Institution. He has degrees in economics from Harvard and Cambridge Universities.
"A magisterial work...As you learn how the world spiraled into
depression...you can't help thinking about the economic crisis
we're living through now."--The New York Times Book Review "The
rich and charming story of the end of the world."--Time "Lords of
Finance is highly readable .... That it should appear now, as
history threatens to repeat itself, compounds its appeal."--Niall
Ferguson, Financial Times "There is terrific prescience to be found
in [Lords of Finance's] portrait of times past...[A] writer of
great verve and erudition, [Ahamed] 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... 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."--Janet Maslin, The New York
Times "This absorbing study of the first collective of central
bankers is provocative, not least because it is still
relevant."--The Economist "This is narrative history at its most
vivid, an epic portrait of how the predecessors of Ben Bernanke,
Jean-Claude Trichet and Mervyn King helped shove economies into the
abyss in 1929...His reportorial style has the Barbara Tuchman
touch. Learned yet unpretentious, he dips into diaries, letters and
cables to pull out evocative vignettes...Central bankers, [Ahamed]
says, can resemble Sisyphus in Greek mythology-- condemned to roll
a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll down again. Like Alan
Greenspan, the four men described here saw their apparent successes
melt into failure."--Bloomberg News "The parallels evidenced by
Ahamed between state of the world financial system then and now add
to the fascination of this remarkable achievement in history,
biography and analysis."--Fort Worth Star Telegram
"An outstanding book...[Ahamed] found a fascinating frame for
relating global economic history from the beginning of World War I
until the dying days of World War II."--The Houston Chronicle
"[Ahamed's] protagonists' high-wire efforts to stave off national
bankruptcies furnish Ahamed with plenty of drama to highlight his
engrossing analysis of the complexities of monetary
policy."--Publishers Weekly "Erudite, entertaining macroeconomic
history of the lead-up to the Great Depression as seen through the
careers of the West's principal bankers...Spellbinding, insightful
and, perhaps most important, timely."--Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"Books grounded in history sometimes offer an eerie resonance for
contemporary readers. Rarely has that statement seemed truer than
with Lords of Finance."-- Steve Weinberger, Dallas Morning News
"[A] wonderful new history"--Newsweek
Ask a Question About this Product More... |