Lords of Finance

Liaquat Ahamed is a financial historian with degrees in economics from both Harvard and Cambridge Universities, and over two decades of professional experience as an investment manager.

His previous book, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, was awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize.

Ahamed is the board chair of the Sun Valley Writers' Conference, a trustee of the Putnam Funds, and a Trustee Emeritus of New America Foundation and the Brookings Institution.

His new book, 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World is available now.

News.

He's the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World-

Mm-hmm

... about what led to the Great Depression.

We wanna get a little bit into geopolitics and impact on society.

I wanna get right back to Liaquat Ahamed.

He is the author, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World.

Who, who writes their first book and-

Today, I am chatting with Liaquat Ahamed, who is the author of a new and wonderful book, 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World, which I enjoyed very much.

Many of you will know him as the author of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World from 2009, a book that won the Pulitzer Prize for history and numerous other awards.

Liaquat also has extensive experience in the private sector, dealing with the World Bank and the IMF, and he has headed the World Bank's investment decisions.

He's also produced a movie about Iraq and, uh, much more as well.

Thank you, Tyler.

I have a general question about how your work fits together.

So your book, Lords of Finance, it convinced me that financial crises really matter, and your new book, 1873, almost convinced me that financial crises don't really matter because the world just keeps on growing.

So what makes for the difference for when, historically speaking, crises will really matter?

One, the, the latest must-read I've found is from Liaquat Ahamed, if that's how you say his name.

Um, he is the writer of "The Lords of Finance," which is, if you haven't read it and you consider yourself a participant in financial markets or financial market history, you have to run out and get a copy.

It's a masterful account of the whole, uh, lead-up into the Great Depression with the key central bank figures of the world and, uh- uh in the u.s i'm forgetting all the names off the top of my head the u.s france and uk i can't remember who else is involved in the in the key story there uh really really great stuff um from him but well written and authoritative so this one is about the 1873 depression which was very remarkable was sort of the hangover from i think the first round of railroad financing you know you had mass deflation you have this the gold standard all this stuff playing its part uh the first great depression and and that's just my vague recollection of what the 1873 was uh depression was about that could be off uh but it's called 1873 the first great depression and the making of the modern world looks really compelling uh and then this is not to spread rumors but just coming from wall street journals it has they're not what they used to be the wall street journal i would say they're a little bit political but um i hadn't really tracked this i did didn't note that during xi jinping's visit to the u.s there was something about he was insisting on these long sort of rest breaks during some of the negotiations or the the day's events or whatever uh and there's a little audio run through of some of the things that are leading to rumors about his health don't know what you can use it for but my goodness of course it would be quite remarkable if we're looking at a different leadership in china how much of his is china's leadership a facade of this sort of supreme leader and how much of it is is he actually that supreme leader i have no idea then we have this is just a news item i don't have a link but the mistral the french ai company has released its latest llm mistral 4 and i love its name is called le chunk a one trillion parameter model so they're trying to step up with their higher performance levels and they're claiming better performance than some of the chinese competition and then michael berry uh out with a recommendation to a paid sub stack you have to pay for the posts there is a teaser there i put the link in there it is i think it's a 35 a month uh sub stack so it's not cheap but you know if you're thinking about should i should i not invest in video what's what's 35 in terms of um in terms of research that again it's not a recommendation or that this person is right it's just uh we have to put these things in perspective here uh but how is it touted uh the the writer of the sub stack says well it's part one on nvidia in this series i will discuss nvidia gpus revenue quarterly reports ruben data centers oems hyperscalers neo clouds and how they are all connected and serve to sustain the most important machine in the markets right now so um you know again given that anticipation or supposed forecast of over a trillion dollars in revenue within five years or reaching over a trillion dollars run rate in revenue within five years critical stuff to to consider all right that's uh that's a wrap for today let's uh see where things are headed the the risk a little bit of risk off vibe here in europe today i'm curious to to see how this develops throughout the day if it's just drip or if it's spreading and actually started in asia if it sloshes over into the u.s session not sure what the catalyst would be except if we have something obvious like um you know a big aggravated rise in crude oil prices otherwise in any case stay careful out there and we'll be back hopefully tomorrow with the next saxo market call this has been the saxo market call podcast thanks for joining today's episode we're always happy for your feedback and questions of all kinds to reach out you can drop us an email at marketcall at saxobank.com that's marketcall at saxobank.com saxo serious trading worldwide

He wrote a highly favorable review of it in the Financial Times in which he recommended it to Fed Chairman Bernanke and his counterparts in Europe and China.

It is Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahmed, the winner of the 2009 Financial Times Book of the Year Award.

It is about the mistakes central bankers made which led to the Great Depression.

Given the challenges facing central bankers today, you can understand why it is so relevant.