The Alchemists
Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire
(Sprache: Englisch)
The inside story of the world s most powerful central bankers and the most intense exercise in economic crisis management the world has ever seen
Suddenly, without warning, in August 2007, three men who had never been elected to public office...
Suddenly, without warning, in August 2007, three men who had never been elected to public office...
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The inside story of the world s most powerful central bankers and the most intense exercise in economic crisis management the world has ever seenSuddenly, without warning, in August 2007, three men who had never been elected to public office found themselves the most powerful people in the world. They were the leaders of the world s three most important central banks: Ben Bernanke of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Mervyn King of the Bank of England, and Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank. In The Alchemists, Washington Post reporter Neil Irwin presents the truly global story of the central bankers role in the world economy that we have been missing. Definitive, revelatory, and riveting, it shows us where money comes from and where it may well be going.
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Introduction:Opening the Spigot
On August 9, 2007, Jean-Claude Trichet awoke at his childhood home of Saint-Malo, on the coast of Brittany, ready for a day puttering about in his motorboat and enjoying the company of his grandchildren. It was time for his summer respite after a busy year as president of the European Central Bank. Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, had also planned a leisurely Thursday: He would make his way from his ?at in London s Notting Hill neighborhood to the Kennington Oval, on the city s south side, to watch the British national cricket team play India. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, was alone among the three men who would guide the world through the convulsions of the half decade to come in having scheduled a regular workday. His security detail was to drive him from his Capitol Hill row house to the Treasury Department, where he had an early breakfast with Secretary Henry Paulson. Bernanke would eat oatmeal. For the three men, the day would not go quite as planned.
At about 7:30 a.m., Trichet s phone rang. Francesco Papadia, the head of the ECB s markets desk, was on the line from the central bank s headquarters in Frankfurt. We have a problem, Papadia said.
Gigantic French bank BNP Paribas had announced that it was suspending withdrawals from three investment funds it managed. The funds were invested heavily in U.S. home-mortgage-backed securities that had become nearly impossible to value. Customers money would be locked up until the bank could ?gure out exactly how much the investments were worth. In itself, it was a tiny development: The three relatively obscure funds held only 1.6 billion in assets.
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But the announcement con?rmed the worst fears of bankers across Europe. They d been worried for weeks about the losses they were facing on U.S. home loans. Supposedly ultrasecure mortgage bonds that had traded freely earlier in 2007 had by late July hardly been trading at all. As more and more people who d taken out risky loans to buy a house in Tampa or Cleveland or Phoenix found themselves unable to pay them back, all the assumptions on which those loans had been made started to be called into question. Maybe all those AAA-rated securities weren t really AAA after all. Had the banks poured vast sums into bonds that weren t worth what they d seemed to be? And if BNP Paribas couldn t ?gure out how much its own funds were worth, how could any other bank know its real exposure to mortgage-backed securities?
It s not for nothing that the word credit derives from the Latin creditus, trusted. Banks use highly rated securities as almost the equivalent of cash whenever they need more dollars or euros, they hand the bonds over to another bank as collateral. It s one of the basic ways they ensure they have exactly the amount of money they need to meet their obligations on any given day. But when it came to those mortgage-backed securities in early August 2007, that simple exchange suddenly became complicated. The problem wasn t just that the securities were worth less than they d been before after all, banks can deal with losses. It s that no one knew just how much less and whether, if one bank had lent money to another down the street in exchange for mortgage-backed securities, it would ever get paid back.
Papadia and his staff spoke regularly with treasurers at twenty major European banks known as the money market contact group, and its members had been warning for days that, as one ECB official put it, an infarction was imminent. That Thursday morning, it hit: After the BNP Paribas announcement, with each bank out only for itself, the usual supply of cash was fast evaporating. Trust was shaken today, Deutsche Bank ch
But the announcement con?rmed the worst fears of bankers across Europe. They d been worried for weeks about the losses they were facing on U.S. home loans. Supposedly ultrasecure mortgage bonds that had traded freely earlier in 2007 had by late July hardly been trading at all. As more and more people who d taken out risky loans to buy a house in Tampa or Cleveland or Phoenix found themselves unable to pay them back, all the assumptions on which those loans had been made started to be called into question. Maybe all those AAA-rated securities weren t really AAA after all. Had the banks poured vast sums into bonds that weren t worth what they d seemed to be? And if BNP Paribas couldn t ?gure out how much its own funds were worth, how could any other bank know its real exposure to mortgage-backed securities?
It s not for nothing that the word credit derives from the Latin creditus, trusted. Banks use highly rated securities as almost the equivalent of cash whenever they need more dollars or euros, they hand the bonds over to another bank as collateral. It s one of the basic ways they ensure they have exactly the amount of money they need to meet their obligations on any given day. But when it came to those mortgage-backed securities in early August 2007, that simple exchange suddenly became complicated. The problem wasn t just that the securities were worth less than they d been before after all, banks can deal with losses. It s that no one knew just how much less and whether, if one bank had lent money to another down the street in exchange for mortgage-backed securities, it would ever get paid back.
Papadia and his staff spoke regularly with treasurers at twenty major European banks known as the money market contact group, and its members had been warning for days that, as one ECB official put it, an infarction was imminent. That Thursday morning, it hit: After the BNP Paribas announcement, with each bank out only for itself, the usual supply of cash was fast evaporating. Trust was shaken today, Deutsche Bank ch
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Autoren-Porträt von Neil Irwin
Neil Irwin is a Washington Post columnist and economics editor of the Post s Wonkblog website. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Neil Irwin
- 2014, 448 Seiten, mit Schwarz-Weiß-Abbildungen, Maße: 13,9 x 21,3 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Penguin US
- ISBN-10: 0143124994
- ISBN-13: 9780143124993
- Erscheinungsdatum: 05.03.2014
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
The New York Times:"[Mr. Irwin] has provided an accessible, engrossing account of the tribulations that Mr. Bernanke, with Mervyn A. King of the Bank of England and Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank, endured in pulling the world financial system back from collapse... Mr. Irwin seems to have talked with everyone, read the right scholarly papers and interviewed important dissenters in the Fed, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bundesbank... He has a nice touch for translating central banking s mysteries, opaque and forbidding, into understandable English. He is astute in describing the internal and external politics of institutions traditionally expected to remain above politics of the usual sort."
Adam S. Posen, Foreign Affairs, President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and member of the Bank of England s Monetary Policy Committee from 2009 to 2012:
"An excellent account...scrupulously reported and full of clear explanations of events and economic concepts....an incredibly valuable book for all economically concerned non-economists. As someone who knows well the three central bankers that the book features...I can attest that the narrative has more than just a ring of truth. It gets the individuals, the circumstances surrounding their decisions, and their motivations right and also presents them fairly. Irwin s volume will have lasting value for a wide range of audiences, including students and elected officials, but it will make its greatest contribution as a corrective to the many unfounded or simply crazy ideas about monetary policymakers intentions and impact."
The Wall Street Journal:
"A detailed and fast-moving account of these perilous years. This is the crisis as told through emails, phone calls, meetings and one very fateful walk along the beach in Deauville, France."
Kirkus Reviews:
"The most complete and authoritative account to date of the response of the
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central bankers to the global financial crisis."
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