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Review
"A brilliant new book."--Newsweek
"Very highly recommended."--Choice
"Important and convincingly argued....Even those who are not sympathetic to the arguments and conclusions of this book will agree that it is destined to be an important work for all future students of the gold standard."--Journal of Economic Issues
Product Description
"Finance is the nervous system of capitalism," observed Ramsay MacDonald, intermittently Britain's prime minister between 1924 and 1935. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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The book begins by describing the inner workings of the gold standard and how it evolved from its inception in the 1800s. This part may be a bit dry for generalists, but once underway all the terms become quite easy to understand. It's worth persevering since WW1changed the way the world worked. In particular, the after effects of the war made staying on gold much more difficult for countries experiencing persistent balance of payments deficits.
After that, Eichengreen goes on a tour of the interwar years and aims to show why the collapse of the gold standard and the plunge into depression had nothing to do with the US stock market and everything to do with rivalries and mismanagment on an international scale. The US crash was a symptom of an international crisis, not the cause.
All the classic powderkegs are there. The UK's mindless attempt to rejoin the gold standard at the overvalued, pre-war rate. Vindictive French domestic politics and the hyperinflations in continental Europe. Vindictive French attempts to humiliate the Germans over reparations. Bank runs in Germany and Austria. French and American attempts to bend the rules of the Gold Standard for their own national interests. Wild swings in capital flows from Europe to the US and back again. And the cataclysmic days of 1931 when the whole system collapsed under the weight of banking crises and currency contagion - in ways very similar to Asia in 1997.
After the crash, we get down to the Great Depression and who fared the best. This part is much shorter since it isn't as complicated. Basically, those countries that devalued quickly and went the free market route fared much better than those that didn't. Sweden was a star performer. The US can be found towards the back of the class. Dear old Blighty gets full marks for going solo, although more recent evidence shows this had more to do with throwing in the towel than playing with new ideas.
Strangely there's little mention of Japan. Nippon took a beating in the late 1920s while the yen remained fixed to gold. Once sterling devalued, the Japanese followed suit. The recovery was swift and full blooded. But the central bank forgot to stop the printing press once growth returned and ended up fighting hyperinflation in the late 1930s. So Eichengreen's line that giving up was the great panacea isn't quite as true as he'd have you believe.
All told, Golden Fetters is great. While it lacks facts and figures on banking problems and doesn't really provide convincing evidence on contagion, it works really well as a diary of contrasting fortunes in Europe and the US after the guns fell silent in 1918. If you like history then this is for you.
Two other essential books on the subject are Essays on the Great Depression by Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve and America's top economist, and Lessons from the Great Depression (Lionel Robbins Lectures) by Peter Temin, one of the greatest economists of the Great Depression. Those books were also written for economists, although Bernanke's book can be read by average people if you skip around.
The average reader wanting to read about the gold standard in a way that a general reader can understand should read the Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States) by David Kennedy. Kennedy's writes thoroughly about the economics of the Great Depression, yet the Oxford History of the United States is designed for everyone to read.
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