Once the war ended it was pretty simple for the U.S. For those - including this writer - who regularly call for currency-price stability as a cure for much of what ails us, the serious commitment among the central bankers of the past to stable money will read in a very appealing way. Wells's observation that gold had "a magnificent stupid honesty" about it, so it wasn't a question of if countries would return to the stability offered by gold rather it was a question of which gold parities should be used. One thing that wasn't up for discussion was whether or not a resumption of the gold standard was a good idea.
having left gold during the war (conflicts have historically been financed with debased money), there was much debate over which currency prices should be used upon a return to the standard. This was easier said than done because with England, France, Germany and the U.S. The major monetary issue in the aftermath of World War I concerned how the world's central banks would return to the gold standard. And while some - particularly libertarians - will find fault with some of Ahamed's analysis, his history of the period is an exciting read regardless of one's policy leanings. New York Fed President Benjamin Strong, Bank of England Chairman Montagu Norman, Banque de France head Emile Moreau and Reichsbank Chairman Hjalmar Schacht were the chief architects of the world's return to monetary normalcy after the death and destruction of World War I. Investor Liaquat Ahamed tells their story in endlessly interesting fashion in his book Lords of Finance, which chronicles the monetary decisions made in the 1920s that proved impactful in the 1930s and beyond. Long before Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson and Tim Geithner were empowered to allegedly save the world's financial system from collapse, a collection of four central bankers from the United States, England, Germany and France similarly controlled the globe's financial fate in the years between the two major wars of the twentieth century.
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