![]() Germany owed enormous sums in reparations to France and Britain, France was in hock to Britain and the US, and Britain in its turn also had huge debts to America. That saddled economies still devastated by war with an unimaginable burden of international debt - vast claims that festered through the next decade and beyond, poisoning international relations. The first and biggest set of errors flowed from the Paris peace conference at the end of the first world war. And he illustrates this with a mixture of compelling narrative, accessible economics and vivid insights. ![]() ![]() Rather, it was caused and compounded by a failure of intellectual will - a lack of understanding about how the economy operated. His conclusion is that the depression was not the result of mysterious forces that governments were powerless to resist. In a brilliant and timely book, Liaquat Ahamed provides some of the important answers. Are there parallels with what's happening today, and what are the lessons to be learned? As the global economy moves down its most dangerous spiral in more than 60 years, the causes and consequences of the great depression have become a subject of burning interest. In recent years, a growing number of senior economists agreed with the view expressed in 2003 by Robert Lucas, winner of the Nobel prize, who argued that the "central problem of depression-prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes". ![]() G ordon Brown was not alone in claiming that economic booms and busts had become a thing of the past. ![]()
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