Ahamed is the author of
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (2009). The book was awarded the 2010
Pulitzer Prize for History, the 2010
Spear's Book Award (Financial History Book of the Year), the 2010
Arthur Ross Book Award Gold Medal, the 2009
Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. For 2009 it was recognized as one of
Time magazine's "Best Books of the Year",
New York Times "Best Books of the Year" and
Amazon.com's "Best Books of the Year". It was shortlisted for the
Samuel Johnson Prize. It is published by Penguin Books (USA) Inc. . The book narrates the events preceding the
Black Tuesday stock market crash of 1929 and the disastrous response of the world's major
central banks. It follows the life and actions of the then chiefs of the central banks:
Benjamin Strong Jr. of the
New York Federal Reserve,
Montagu Norman of the
Bank of England,
Émile Moreau of the
Banque de France, and
Hjalmar Schacht of the
Reichsbank.
John Maynard Keynes, a British well-known economist of the time appears on many occasions in the book in a role opposing the central bankers. The main theme of the book is the role played by the central bankers' insistence to adhere to the
gold standard "even in the face of total catastrophe". In June 2012, Ahamed himself drew a similar parallel in a
Financial Times column, saying that "during the past few months, as the crisis in Europe has spiralled out of control", he had "begun to fear that the world might in fact be repeating some of th[e] same errors" as those made in the 1920s and 1930s. While the 21st-century central bankers and banks were starkly different from their 19th-century predecessors, Ahamed said that "as they experiment with unconventional monetary tools to get the global economy moving, ironically they may find their years of training less useful than their instincts. ... [S]ome of the same intractable factors that their predecessors of the 1930s had to contend with will overwhelm them once again", today's bankers fear. France, Ahamed pointed out, was the strongest economy and financial system in 1930s Europe, while Germany was reeling. And like Germany seemingly in 2012, France in the 1930s could not find a way to use its strength to help its neighbor. Ahamed in June 2012 concluded with a question: "If, over the next few months, a financial accident takes place in Europe, as is likely, is there any European institution willing and able to act as fast and with such vigour [as the 2008,
Lehman-bankruptcy-era US Fed and Treasury] to prevent a disaster?" ==Personal life==