The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire
Written by Neil Irwin
Narrated by Walter Dixon
5/5
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About this audiobook
Neil Irwin's The Alchemists is a gripping account of the most intense exercise in economic crisis management we've ever seen, a poker game in which the stakes have run into the trillions of dollars. The book begins in, of all places, Stockholm, Sweden, in the seventeenth century, where central banking had its rocky birth, and then progresses through a brisk but dazzling tutorial on how the central banker came to exert such vast influence over our world, from its troubled beginnings to the Age of Greenspan, bringing the reader into the present with a marvelous handle on how these figures and institutions became what they are - the possessors of extraordinary power over our collective fate. What they chose to do with those powers is the heart of the story Irwin tells.
Irwin covered the Fed and other central banks from the earliest days of the crisis for the Washington Post, enjoying privileged access to leading central bankers and people close to them. His account, based on reporting that took place in 27 cities in 11 countries, is the holistic, truly global story of the central bankers' role in the world economy we have been missing. It is a landmark reckoning with central bankers and their power, with the great financial crisis of our time, and with the history of the relationship between capitalism and the state. Definitive, revelatory, and riveting, The Alchemists shows us where money comes from-and where it may well be going.
Neil Irwin
NEIL IRWIN is senior economic correspondent at The New York Times, where he was a founding member of The Upshot. He is the author of The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire, a New York Times bestselling account of the global financial crisis and its aftermath, short-listed for the McKinsey-Financial Times Business Book of the Year award. He has an MBA from Columbia University, where he was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism. He lives in Washington.
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Reviews for The Alchemists
3 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a great book if you are interested in central banks.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book that gives a view of the financial crisis on a global scale.