Liaquat Ahamed has spent years making central bankers into compelling characters. His 2009 book Lords of Finance won the Pulitzer Prize for its account of the bankers whose decisions helped cause the Great Depression; his new book, 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World, tells a stranger story — a severe deflationary crisis that barely dented global growth but poisoned politics for a generation. Tyler pushes him hard on the central puzzle of those two books — why did one financial crisis derail the world, while another left growth almost untouched?

Tyler and Liaquat start with that puzzle before moving through Gladstone's startlingly self-interested bet on Egyptian bonds, Bismarck's role in destroying bimetallism and deflating the world economy for two decades, whether a global silver or symmetallic standard could have worked, Britain's fateful decision to re-peg the pound to gold in 1926, Hjalmar Schacht's transformation from the economist who stabilized Weimar's currency to opportunist collaborator with the Nazi regime, Montagu Norman's spiritualist beliefs, why the 1920s produced such a creative cultural moment, lessons from the IMF on Ireland's housing bubble and Pakistan's two dozen bailouts, what went wrong in the eurozone crisis, Britain's baffling modern stagnation, and finally to his own restless career and what he wants to write next.

Read a transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube.

Recorded July 28th, 2026.

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Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:13 - On 1873 vs. the Great Depression

00:15:32 - On bimetallism and the gold standard

00:21:32 - On the 1920s and Weimar hyperinflation

00:29:29 - On Ireland, Pakistan, and the Eurozone crisis

00:36:21 - On Liaquat's career and Ismaili Islam

00:44:37 - Outro

Liaquat Ahamed on Financial Crises, Gold, and the Lessons of 1873

Conversations with Tyler

Liaquat Ahamed on Financial Crises, Gold, and the Lessons of 1873