The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire

With the caveat that I am a slow reader and sometimes an admittedly lazy one, the amount that I have read of the Alchemists is wonderful. It is an easy read and a revealatory one. One must enjoy history and because of the financial debacle of the Great Recession of 2007, I have been intellectually prodded to learn of things I heretofore avoided. I love history, I love national politics but I always hated and avoided like the plague anything that had to do with economics because of my aversion to math. It was to my detriment. One can learn about this subject and learn about our Federal Reserve system a huge part of this subject, learn about our currency system without getting into the weeds of the minutiae of math. Math is to me what Kryptonite is to Superman. I have a natural aversion to it.The Great Recession forced me to figure out what in God's name went wrong and I could only do that by learning the facts minus the numbers of what it was about and how did the middle class get crushed but the barons of Wall Street make billions. How did THEY get what the middle class lost. The middle class of this nation did all the right things but because they were not a member in good standing of the the 2% money club they ended up living out of their cars or motels or even took their own lives as they could not survive. How could this have happened seemingly under our naive or ignorant noses. How did this 2% get to be and why has this house of cards we call a capitalist economic system fail us so many many times throughout history.I began to ask questions like what is the Fed and when I was told by those close to me in the know that it was NOT government owned that it was a private entity run by just a few governors of it I needed to know more. Where did it come from and why do some think it responsible for the trillions of debt our government owes BUT others think it has saved the world? I needed to know the etiology of our perils, where fiat currency came from who gets to print money and I needed to know why so many of supreme intellect say takes us seemingly out of these perils saving the nation from another 1929 Great Depression. This book is historically fascinating to explain our contemporary economic structure . I, though, have on my KIndle more books to explain more.I have been told to read Schiller's "Finance and the Good Society" and I have been told to read "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin (although the author of this is in my opinion too extremist right wing biased.) Albeit the book is good. The Alchemists is feeding my yearning to know and understand the essence of the US economic system. I only wish I took the interest twenty years earlier.The Alchemists seems to be for me fascinating because of my basic need to know.

Of course I always hope for a book on the US/EZ crisis that will provide some analysis and numbers. Unfortunately, this book doesn't. It also has the usual fault of most books on the financial crisis of almost entirely ignoring derivatives. The author glides over the AIG failure in a paragraph and completely misses the Maiden Lane payoffs to Goldman Sachs and most the European banks (which probably saved them). Why 4 stars? Well, it is a good book that gathers up the news reporting (vs. any type of analysis) on the crisis for the period 2008-2012. It is always good to have a summary in one spot.Here are some of the issues that I wish were addressed:1. What happens when the interest rates rise to 5-7% for 10 year bonds? Take Italy with its 145% GDP for National Debt. It can survive at 1.8% interest but not at 7%. Is Draghi going to print money forever????2. How much printed money (in terms of GDP) does it take to cause inflation? This issue isn't addressed in this book (or any other that I can find). Obviously the Latin American countries have figured out how to create inflation (I think Venezuela is at 80% now). Germany did it climaxing in 1923. Clearly the US Fed and EZ have printed vast sums of money but no inflation has resulted....yet.While this book is a good summary, I think my book, "Euro how to save it" is better (at least a little analysis there).

This book relates the events of the 2008 financial disaster in terms easily understood by the non financial expert. It represents a well balanced historical narrative of the events and their consequences.In all fairness, I am an experienced financial person. I have studied for many years the events surrounding the multiple financial problems, starting with the events surrounding the Great Depression. This book lays out the issues in a well balanced fashion without the dramatic exagerations so common in today's media presentations. I have read the six or seven major books written on this subject, starting with Hank Paulson's, and I find that The Alchemists is the best of the lot. Suggested reading to those that want to understand the events and the mistakes made during the period.

Wonderful read.In addition to providing great color to the Great Financial Crisis and simultaneously exploring reactions in the United States, the U.K, and ECB, this book also offers great comparison with the Great Depression. Issues that were similar/different and how the central bankers' used history to influence their actions. Particularly, Bernanke who had immersed himself in the Great Depression. This book provides something of interest to historian buffs and economists alike. A very easy but engaging read! I love this book! It was very well written and provided a lot of context along the way.

This may be a little too "policy-wonky" for some, but if you are interested in learning more about the function of central banks, the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of England especially, then this is a good book to read. Written by a newsman, it is more readable than a textbook on economics, and in more biographical terms tells the story of these three central bankers in a more compelling way. They probably did save the world over the past 5 or 6 years, and it is a story that thinking people should know and understand. In some ways the story is a bit scary, but more people need to understand the way modern currency systems work so they would be less susceptible to fools like Ron Paul who wants to get rid of the Federal Reserve!! We would all be eating roots right now if it were not for the Federal Reserve!!!! I wish I could read everyone at least the first half of this book!!