In one of the last dialogue of the film Egg of the snake , Ingmar Bergman pitched through Vergérus teacher's voice, an inveterate fascist, his disastrous prophecy of Nazi Germany: "And then there will be a revolution, and our world will sink in blood and fire. In 10 years, no more." Covered in clarity that sometimes gives the passage of time, masterfully portrayed the Europe of the interwar period, the decade of 20.
Just about the history of the shipwreck becomes L you lords of finance, Liaquat Ahamed, an investment consultant with a remarkable and unprecedented narrative and historiography available. The book is the story of what was originally deemed the apocalypse of Western society, the Great Depression. Driving a time frame that runs from the beginning of the First World War and the aftermath of the 40's, Ahamed tells the story of the Great Depression "above the shoulders" of those individuals who led central banks in the world when the crisis erupted.
is the former "world's most exclusive club" formed by Montagu Norman, "neurotic and enigmatic" by the Bank of England, the "xenophobic and suspicious" Émile Moreau de la Banque de France; the head of the Reichsbank, a "rigid and arrogant" Hjalmar Schacht, and in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Benjamin Strong, "under whose energetic and dynamic appearance hid a man injured and overwhelmed."
Four individuals who, however, charged today with a fundamental paradox and, perhaps, somewhat ironic: "There is something very poignant in the contrast between the power wielded a day for four men and its almost total disappearance of the pages of history. These four men were buried under the rubble of the time and now mean nothing to the majority. "
Thus, plunging into the shadows of oblivion, Ahamed is capturing the finer strands that make up the life of each of these individuals, lint that run from his family origins to the philandering and mania everywhere. In a way, The lords of finance is a sort of biography of four bands that slowly and almost by dint of fate, they begin to coalesce into a single story, one decade full of contradictions thundering booms and falls. So, as if it were a sounding board, the "shoulders" of these four individuals are opening "the story of the passage of the thunderous prosperity of the 20's to the Great Depression. "
However, it should be recognized that the interpretation of Ahamed to explain the debacle of the 20's, the double causal emphasizes treaty Versailles and return to the gold standard, lacks novelty. Several historians have proved the point. Hence appropriate to ask where is the novelty and merit of this book, moreover, was awarded the 2010 Pulitzer history.
First, it is a commendable narrative, capable of generating the illusory sensation, times elusive to historians of academia, in which the past is suspended into a kind of mind that is still open even to its many possibilities. Using these conspicuous characters, each in its own way opened the multiple dimensions of the future of that troubled era.
Ahamed But the bet is equally bold in the distance under the stories making anonymous, very of our time, to show a specific individual, fallible. A trifle? Not so much. We have become accustomed to a history of large masses, structures and processes in which the human being, specific individuals, they have no more than fulfill the role of spectator and notary. Literally, things happen, happen, we are or not.
In this, the counterpoint to Bergman is an illustrator: the Swedish film director used a perfectly insane and obvious evil to embody the ominous future, Liaquat Ahamed characters simply turned to human subjects ethical decisions in a given time, acted and missed. In the case of The lords of finance were four men "who ruined the world." Is it possible that a few, despite its enormous power and glory, to be able to break down supposedly intact foundations of a society? In short, can depend on the future of a society than a handful of people decided that we would have two hands?
Ahamed, with reliability, makes us think so, and firm belief that these were undermined bankers who, over a decade, the scaffolding capitalist. As recognized at the end of the book, the tsunami of misery that swept the world was not the work of "a mysterious and inexorable tectonic forces, much less a" contradiction rooted in capitalism. " Rather, the Great Depression was the "direct result of a series of misjudgments by those responsible for setting economic policy (...) the most dramatic series of collective blunders ever committed by senior financial officers.
Thus, the sin of dogmatism religious with the economists, yesterday and today, often coated, these characters were responsible for assuming the worst economic measure of all: the return of the gold standard.
Precisely, this is just by trouble with the book, leaves us with an orthodoxy that is not exclusive to these castaways history. Inside job , the documentary about the crisis of 2008 and which won an Oscar, goes to the same point. Both book and film, attacking from different angles and times, the orthodox economists, those principles that are presented as revealed truths. Yesterday was the gold standard. The chant of today, I think we know: deregulation at any cost. In short, this is a book to tell the arrogant idiocy of the past and that, however, serves as an antidote, or at least prophylaxis against this.
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