This new book by Liaquat Ahamed, Lords of Finance – 1929, The Great Depression, and the Bankers Who Broke the World, looks like a good read. See the review by The Economist here, which concludes:
These great central bankers were so wedded to a dogma that they were incapable of imagining its failure.
Perhaps this kind of single-mindedness is endemic to central bankers; since the early 1990s the idea of controlling inflation at all costs has been so compelling that central bankers have ignored such unintended consequences as bubbles in the housing and stock markets. But these were big enough, when they burst, to trigger a worldwide slump. Not lords of finance surely; more like high priests.
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