Audiobook review for the Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed. I checked the book out after Ben Bernanke recommended it.
First of all, let me tell you that I checked out the audio version for free from my local digital library. This was the first time I have ever checked out anything from the digital library. I downloaded the Overdrive listening software and was under the impression that once the return date came, the audiobook would somehow vanish. The lending period was seven days. At 18 hours long, it took a while to finish listening to Lords of Finance. I did not finish the audiobook in the seven day lending period.
Seven days passed and the audiobook did not vanish from my IPhone. Since there are a ton of titles available for download, I don’t know why I would ever need to buy an audiobook ever again. Maybe I am missing something. I haven’t checked anything out again yet. There has to be a catch. But I digress, let us go on to the review.
Stephen Hoye is the narrator of the Lords of Finance audiobook. Mr. Hoye did an excellent job and I would recommend listening to any audiobook that he has voiced.
I really enjoyed this book. I found a lot of parallels between the speculative stock market frenzy in the U.S. of the late 1920′s and the late 1990′s. Just like the days before the crash of the dot-com bubble, the 1920′s saw many stock market clubs of small-town investors who pooled their money together to speculate on stocks. And just like the late 1990′s, investors threw conventional wisdom out the window saying that things were different now and the market would continue to rise.
There are also parallels between the Great Depression and the United States housing boom financial crisis.
At the beginning of the Great Depression, Treasury secretary Mellon under Herbert Hoover stated, “Speculators who had lost money deserved it and should pay for their reckless behavior. The U.S economy was fundamentally sound and would rebound of its own accord.” Today, I can hear the same voices echoed in the Tea Party activists who denounce government bailouts.
There is a section about the Bank of United States. This bank was headquartered in Manhattan with many branches located throughout the city. Many of its depositors were small Jewish merchants. It was the run on the Bronx branch that is said to have started the collapse of the banking system during the Great Depression. It seems that P.J. Wolfson, a resident pharmacist in 1930, was very fortuitous to have left New York and switched careers at a time when a tidal wave of financial ruin hit.
The book highlights a lot of personalities of government officials around Europe and the U.S. who had great impacts on the world’s financial markets. Most importantly, the book provides insights into the mind of economist John Maynard Keynes. Given the context of the times, I learned how John Maynard Keynes made a fortune speculating on the currency markets and how it seemed how he alone understood what was going on in the world financial markets.
If you have any interest in economics, I highly recommend this book. Not only will you have a better grasp on what lead up to the Great Depression, you will gain knowledge about the gold standard, market psychology, the money supply, and the wisdom of John Maynard Keynes who stated that “In the long run, we are all dead”.