Long on detail short on meaning

If you are buying this book to understand the ethics of central banking move on. It's an important string of details that build an argument for, as the title says "Collusion" among central bankers. However Prins avoids an examination of the moral hazard of self interested private bankers determining our monetary policy and much of the world economy.

10 people found this helpful

Thorough research, well presented but could have been shorter

I purchased this book after hearing it recommended several times as a definitive piece of work on the actual (and perceived) role of central banks. Nomi Prins did not disappoint. The book is the result of decades of research on this one, often misunderstood, topic of central banks and their role. It describes in detail a journey across the Americas, Asia and Europe during the time leading to and after the global financial crisis (GFC). But with each geographic area she first delves into their respective history to set the context for the decisions that were being made during the GFC and why.

There’s an old proverb that says “When the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers”. In this book the elephants are the heads of Central Bank and government leaders in each country. The average citizen (on market street not Wall Street) is trampled on as central bank decisions are made in the interest of a select few. But the really insightful (and somewhat scary) part is how the various countries and economic blocks colluded in thinking and in their actions, which weren’t necessarily what they had said in the first place.

This book is for anyone interested in understanding why we are where we are economically and financially. Even for the uninitiated in economics like me; I’m in IT security & risk, there is a lot to learn from the well presented findings. Ellen Archer does a great job keeping the story alive throughout. My only dislike is that on several occasions the book went over the exact same wording from earlier sections while describing a different geographical setting. This made the book longer than I feel it could have been.

2 people found this helpful

A clear insightful narrative of monetary collusion

Greatly enjoyed book and insightful narrative of monetary collusion as it delved into the role big banks played in its aftermath.

2 people found this helpful

Way too in the weeds

The premise of this book that the author is inside the system is not reflected in the book itself which is reams of information from public sources about minute details country by country by country. It’s not worth listening too unless you just have 16 hours to waste.

It spends 16 hours to basically say that in 2008 the central bankers took over the world and they aren’t going to give it back.

3 people found this helpful

Fantastic!!!

Fantastic overview of global financial evolution! This is an incredibly detailed account of the men behind the curtain in high finance on a globe scale! Loved it!

1 person found this helpful

Fair history survey, lazy characterizations

Why do I read a book -- "hire" an author? To get unique value. Here, I had trailed off on the central bank story some in recent years, so a survey of the recent history would have some value. This work, on its facts, was mostly content I could get from a google search of key headline articles over the same time span. No, we are not made privy to these whispered confidential insider conversations, as the publisher's teaser hints. Mostly we get the basic facts alongside public PR press releases of the top central bankers and finance ministers. This recounting was worthwhile but not standout; it was useful to see a compendium of the rhetoric of these officials and nations, back and forth. That is the better aspect and value of this book: it is pretty good as a basic history recital.

How about the analysis, then? Instantly, peeves jumped out here. One was the repetition of certain trademark phrases, murky and ill-defined. Collusion was one. How is it distinguished from cooperation? Well, if one accepts the (not thoroughly historically grounded) evil bankers subtext, then I guess we could use that term carelessly thereafter. But that narrative, often some sort of faintly leftish populist whining to my ears, isn't neatly pinned to the history and facts. We just need to swallow the author's POV. A better book, IMO, would elevate the discussion by explicating the nuances, dilemmas, trade-offs and alternatives faced by these actors in those times. Instead, we have simplistic breezy passages skipping by these matters, and too much of a tone of resentful sniping (expressed in simplistic, overused catch-phrases). I guess I should be satisfied with these cues for what I should uncritically conclude alongside this author. Of course elitist bankers who go to Davos are wrecking our lives and crushing the noble aspirations of emerging economies, right? (I do agree with her point that the Fed fumbled subprime regulation pre-crisis. OK, there is a whole history there, written up elsewhere, not explicated here, but then? What new insights are to be found? Once the edifice was in collapse, after centuries of a buildup of this semi-private weird banking system, AT THAT JUNCTURE, what tools were at hand, what alternative risks? Eternal resentment is the cheap shot for a thinker and author, I believe.) How, for example, would things be different if the (supposedly) noble Joe Six-Packs of the world (who had just themselves heedlessly plunged off a cliff into subprime home loans they signed) had been simply handed wads of money? That is impliedly (I think? I am left to conjecture in this murk) suggested as a better thing, but not explored. What might have happened without these bankers' machinations? We simply get recrimination here, mostly. This same casual tossing about of words and assumptions surrounds the oft-used (and useless, and carelessly constructed, and pejorative) term money-conjuring. Hello: we got a central bank to get elasticity in currency aggregates when needed. But none of that (troublingly nuanced and complex stuff, though not beyond the reach of this book's audience) is here. Instead, we can take a sniping tone to suggest these Davos elites are some sort of malevolent witches, cackling and conjuring money as if around a cartoon cauldron. So too, this author in any situation of ambiguity invariably defaults to criticizing US financial elites, versus any of the other (I will say, at least equally greedy, scheming, self-interested) players and I think she tends to laud others in other nations who are playing the same games, usually less aptly (IMO).

Finally, the excessive casualness appears in imputing intentions and motives to people and whole nations unsupported by the data points provided. Several times we are told what Ben Bernanke's aims were, alongside his quotes that are more intelligent and nuanced than the author tried to nudge us to believe. And, I recall a phrase, not unusual in its style in this book, of the sort, "the United States believed ...." That is absurd on its face. The USA is not a monolithic entity that believes some simple linear thing. Some person(s) within the USA took a position, yes. It would be more accurate to call the USA completely schizophrenic than to impute such a narrow belief. I.e., this has low information content.
I would, if editing this, have, I believe, helped push this author harder point by point to produce a far more justifiably penetrating and influential work. The promise is here, the framework is here, the execution falls short. I think All the President's Bankers by her had almost identical issues.

12 people found this helpful

A timeline of central banking collusion

This is a brilliant timeline of global collusion by central banks to inflate asset prices which primarily the wealthy own exclusively.
With so many names and dates it's a bit hard to follow as an audiobook but I'm sure the hard copy is a page Turner.

Tons of examples of collusion I hope they can find

Tons of examples of collusion I hope they can find a solution. I always figured the market recovered surprisingly fast and smoothly.

Central banks is the biggest scam

Very insightful book and it's actually scary to think that the collusion is still going on today

Repetitive in the extreme; only for policy wonks

This audiobook, clocking in at 14 1/2 hours, is about twice as long as necessary. In the process of covering the Great Recession of 2008-09 and central banks' coordinated response to it, Nomi Prins covers much of the same ground in almost every chapter. She deals with, in order, Mexico, Brazil, China, Japan and Europe and the response of their central banks to the Federal Reserve's "money conjuring" schemes. This has the effect of repeating many of the same facts regarding the Fed and the US economy in almost every chapter. Also, the use of the phrase "money conjuring" or "money conjurer" is far, far overdone. That phrase, or a variation of it, is probably used 1,000 times in the book (not an exaggeration).

What this adds up to is a book that is mind-numbing in its detail, but my guess is that most listeners/readers won't care about the level of detail provided here. You can easily get lost in the names or foreign bankers or who attended what financial conference when. What is mostly missing is the fallout from all of this cheap money: how it enriched the elites at the expense of ordinary citizens. Yes, Prins mentions this in summary fashion in almost every chapter and the final 30 minute chapter (by far the shortest as most chapters are well over an hour, sometimes approaching two hours) does a better job describing this, but it is still only cursory in its treatment.

As a reader, I am less interested in the detail of how it was done, but for what purpose and who benefited. This book is short on that level of detail. I have never read any of Ms. Prins' other books and after this one I probably won't.

At least I only had to listen to the narrator, Ellen Archer, mispronounce LIBOR as "lee-bor" two or three times in the opening introductory chapter and, fortunately, the term was never used again. Alas, I didn't know how many times I would have to hear "money conjuring" so it probably wasn't a fair trade.

One last tip: if you listen to this book, you will quickly find yourself listening to it faster than you normally listen to an audiobook due to the repetition. I usually listen at 1.5x speed. I started there, ramped to 1.75x, then 2x and, finally, an incredible 2.5x speed. It was the only way due to the monotonous repetition.