Reddit reviews Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World
We found 16 Reddit comments about Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Penguin Books
While this is sort of correct it isn't completely right. Compared to others of that time he wasn't actually that rich at all. Rockefeller and Carnegie for example, had extreme amounts of money that dwarfed Morgans fortune. What Morgan had was power. He is said to be the most powerful banker that has ever lived. He had many rich friends that had much influence in finance. He was able to convince them to help stop the panic.
Just to show my point a bit further, Morgan was estimated to have about the equivalent of around $50 billion in today's money. Carnegie and Rockefeller both had around the $300-350 ish billion mark. That's not to say he wasn't rich, I just wanted to point out the fact that he alone couldn't solve the panic. It was his influence and power that helped him. I thought I would just expand a bit more on your comment.
If anyone thinks this kind of stuff is interesting Lords of Finance is a great read on the most powerful bankers in the world around this time period. It's a bit long and can get a little drawn out in some parts, but overall its very fascinating and I would recommend it to anyone interested in this sort of stuff.
Probably a bit aggressive but there is no doubt that Allied negotiators wanted to exact revenge on Germany and her allies, and ended up causing WW2 (the reparations and penalties extracted from Germany created the conditions for Hitler's rise). More in this excellent and well-respected book: https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/0143116800
And to understand the Great Depression better (which is important):
I'm sure there are some good books on the matter, and hopefully someone else in this sub will have some recommendations for you as well.
Politics and economics make terrible bedfellows, but if you would like to know about policy making some historical books would probably be in order.
Lords of Finance
Piketty's Capital
Sorkin's Too Big to Fail
And most readers of this sub know that nearly anything by Michael Lewis is good, if a bit dramatized.
Really though, economic policy making is done mostly by politicians, or politically motivated economists. The politicians don't have a clue about economics, and the economists tend to be picked by the politicians for saying what the politicians like to hear.
This is more a political question than a finance question. The guys in finance don't really care who's in office as long as regulatory capture is still around.
Apocalyptica covered Sabaton's Fields of Verdun before Sabaton's version even came out. Now that's some serious collaboration by musicians. Props to the two bands. I like their work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQDJpL_PbGg
This year marks 100 years since the Paris Peace Conference. An event that began in January and was signed in June, the conference set the groundwork for a century of world events ranging from the sequel to The War to End All Wars to anti-colonial movements & nationalism. Fun fact: signing the treaty at the Palace of Versailles was no accident; Prussia had France sign the 1871 treaty ending the Franco-Prussian war at the Palace of Versailles as well, so the 1919 treaty was a multilayered political statement by the French. (This also included a provision that Germany return Alsace-Lorraine, which was acquired in 1871. That territory has a fascinating linguistic and cultural history since it's a border province.)
This is a hell of an important centennial.
> “If we aim at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare say, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the later German war will fade into nothing, and which will destroy, whoever is victor, the civilisation and the progress of our generation.” ~John Maynard Keynes
Btw, if anybody is interested in the Treaty of Versailles, I highly recommend Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed for its portrayal of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and its economic & political effects on Europe and America.
I know I'm almost two months early, but I have ... expectations ... for how POTUS will handle 28 June 2019.
I'm repeating myself, but Pulitzer Prize winning "Lords of Finance" comes to mind.
http://www.amazon.ca/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/0143116800
Lords of Finance is very good. It's the story of how central banks post WW1 responded to a financial and political crisis and sowed the seeds of the next crisis... sound similar to anything that's happened recently?
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World is a pretty good book about the global fincial industry post-WWI. I would definitely recommend it.
For a comprehensive look at the Western financial system between the two world wars, try Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed. It is written as a popular history piece, and so avoids much of the jargon, or else explains it in lay terms. It also covers the basics of how the banking system works as well as the macro-economy. Although dealing with events from 1900-1940s, the concepts should give you a better grounding in how these systems work on a fundamental level, with more modern texts as suggested by others giving you contemporary context.
Sure, but no quick reads. Here's an award winning book about the economics behind the great depression, drawing ties to the 08-09 crisis, and is filled with history about America, England, France and Germany
http://www.amazon.ca/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/0143116800
Lords of Finance?
Part finance, part economics, I highly recommend Lords of Finance (https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-World/dp/0143116800). It discusses the actions of several key people and subsequent events in the banking sector leading up to the Great Depression. Largely shaped our world today.
I read (in Lords of Finance) that one of the main reasons that France and Britain insisted on the high reparations was that the US insisted on both of them paying back their (also quite high?) war debts to the US. So one the one hand the US tried to get a lighter treatment of Germany, on the other hand they indirectly caused it. Again: one of the reasons, the book does not try to explain it all with that argument.
Read the creature from jekel Island to redpill yourself. Gold standard has issues in particular the limited amount of Gold (After WWII the US had almost all the world's gold read the Lords of Finance for argumesnts against Gold standard). However almost anything would be better than the current system in which bankers effectively own the world and are always the hidden power behind the throne due to their ability to create money.
One of the major issues was that they wouldn't revalue the price of Gold as they were printing money (Gold was always $70 and they could have created a new standard pricing Gold at $400). So old way was not ideal but it could be made to work. (Don't ask me how) Current system also tends to favour boom and bust cycles and not stability.
I am happy he has brought it up as the current financial system needs complete overhaul.
>there is nothing else meaningful to base your government policy, or your ethics off of.
My ethics are based on providing maximum freedom to the individual, irrespective of what they do with it. I'm not concerned about promoting the greater good by central planning. Why does the good of the group outweigh the good of the individual?
>I am not sure there is any realistic example in which some can suffer a lot for others benefit, and this maximises utility.
I would say this depends on the scope of the group you are talking about benefiting. The US harms many overseas to benefit the domestic population, for example.
>Ultimately I have some faith in governments... to fail less than the market does. i simply think they fail less (or have the potential to fail less) than the free market.
When the government fails, it does so after having threatened the people with violence, taken their money, and then wither wasted it, lost it, and hurt the many to benefit the politically connected. Market failures certainly do happen, but they are the result of the choices people make, which to me is far less unethical than a government failure. Do you think governments have the potential to fail worse than the market, with worse outcomes from those worse failures?
>I am a Keynesian, so I think deficit spending is terrific.
Even Keynes only suggested deficit spending during recessions, not every single year during good times as well.
>The only way to deal with this is a very informed electorate, which is hardly an exciting solution.
It's an irrational solution. Have you ever read anything like They Myth of the Rational Voter? The amount of time it takes to become educated on all the relevant topics compared to the meaninglessness of your vote statistically among many millions makes it a very poor investment of your time.
>These are deeply heterodox views, and you would have a hard time finding a respectable modern academic to back you up on them.
The government isn't exactly known for its historical honesty, and supports people who support its views. However, there are some recognized works, including this Pulitzer Prize winning book. Ben Bernanke has a concurring view of Milton Friedman's work to show the great depression worsened by Federal monetary policy
>respectable
The trouble with this word is that in today's discourse anyone who supports a heterodox view of anything is instantly branded as "not-respectable."
I'm going to skip your stuff on austerity, as I am not familiar with the particulars of those countries and don't have anything informed to say about them. My apologies.
>I am all in favour of a smaller military
Yes, but if you're concerned about the environment, then the military is currently and ongoing government failure, dare I say a disaster. Can you point to something the market is failing at that has an equally large impact?
>that energy would have been consuming by the free market equivalent of the services provided by government anyway.
This assumes the government programs are as efficient as market ones. Would you make that assumption?
>Again, while the government is not perfect, it is the better than the alternative.
False dichotomy. What is the alternative? There can be many alternatives.
>Almost all of the top universities in the world are publicly run, Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford etc.
Harvard is private. The Ivy league schools are private. Also, what does "top" mean? Top at what? Promoting an orthodox view? Producing the best minds to go into politics and lord over people?
>higher than many poor people could afford in the free market, this is the ultimate problem of education in the market.
In much of the developing world private education is stepping in where the government fails.
>What sort of social mobility can you expect when the lower classes are educated so badly relative to their more rich counterparts?
The US government is a worst offender of this I can think of, because it funds schools on property taxes. Government education is a massive failure, yet it produces people at the ready to denounce private education.
Going to the gold standard has many issues. A good book that covers some of the problems with it is Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World
Amazing how some folks did not look at history and just aim to relearn the same lessons again.