As the book “Lords of Finance” has often been remarked and discussed here, I thought I would link to a review of Liaquat Ahamed’s newest book, “How the Gilded Age Economy Broke The World”. I have not read it yet, but his earlier book was so well researched and convincing that I will be purchasing this one (hard cover!) in the next day or two.

While the title is self-explanatory, I thought to extract a few lines from the Times review:

In the late 19th century, the world endured a phenomenon never seen before or since: a continuous fall in prices across the globe. The long slide lasted for a quarter-century and was kicked off in 1873 by an international financial crash. Before the 1930s, this period of deflation, bankruptcy and instability was known as “the Great Depression.”

But it was a strange kind of depression. By many indications, the economy took little time to recover. Within a few years, trade increased, technology progressed rapidly and real wages mostly rose. Cheaper food and fuel meant higher average living standards.

And yet inequality reached a peak that has only been surpassed in recent years. Large swaths of people were left behind when markets stabilized after the initial shock, fueling resentment that seeped into global politics for decades to come.

The review goes on to list a few of the proximate causes of what was, at that time, called “The Great Depression”. (The name would later change to “The Long Depression” after the appearance of the catastrophe in 1929-1940). [In the spirit of rhyming I note that “The Great War” simply became “World War I” with the arrival of that even Greater War in 1939.]

In Ahamed’s expert telling, the problems began with a series of seismic movements of money: the 1848 California gold rush, the construction of railroads in the ’50s and ’60s, the accumulated debts of the U.S. Civil War and the payment of French reparations to newly united Germany after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Together these developments stimulated decades of growth.

Soon, more people had more cash to invest in more risky things like foreign stock markets. International loans ballooned and governments, especially in the Middle East, borrowed cheap money to fund ambitious projects of varying degrees of plausibility. Stock and banking bubbles inflated in Vienna, Berlin and New York, and they burst the way bubbles often do, when some big, corrupt firms went spectacularly bankrupt. At the same time, the custodians of the financial world made a tremendous mistake:

Anyway, gift link: Enjoy:

nytimes.com - Liaquat ahamed