BOOK REVIEW
Title: THE ALCHEMISTS-
Inside the secret world of central bankers
Author: NEIL IRWIN
Publisher: Headline
Business Plus, UK, 2013
Price: Rs. 599/- or 25 Pounds Sterling.
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Insolvent or
Illiquid?
The world of the Central Banker is a repository of arcane,
almost limitless power, magnified by the fact that economists rarely agree on
the disease, let alone the cure. Classic
text book economics seldom works in the real world, particularly when the
Central Banker is invested with the monetary policy, and the Politician with
the fiscal, legislative/executive side. And neither is capable of prescience to
the degree required, no matter how learned.
Most of the paroxysms of financial suffering therefore,
inflicted on the populace during economic crises, are usually the consequences
of the assumptions and actions of just two men, the Reserve Bank Chairman and
the Finance Minister. And their well-meaning experiments to: ‘do no harm” which
sometimes go horribly wrong.
In Central Banking, as in other fields, you need luck. It sustained
the legendary Alan Greenspan through 19 years at the helm of the US Federal
Reserve, with more or less untrammelled prosperity during his watch.
His
predecessor, the six feet seven inches
tall Paul Volcker, tamed inflation by choking off the US economy, rather like the Subbarao- Rajan effort on-going here in India.
Others, coming after; Ben Bernanke of the US Federal
Reserve, Mervyn King and Jean-Claude Trichet of the Bank of England and The
European Central Bank respectively, have been grappling with the greatest
threat to the world’s economic stability since 2007.
These latter have
prevented a collapse of a highly connected and globalised financial system with
challenges possibly greater than ever before encountered.
All the expertise in the world is essentially inert except
as it is applied. And the Central Banker along with the Finance Minister have
the ability by law, to print money, thereby creating
wealth out of paper and ink, and
applying it to the threats and objectives they deem appropriate.
The title of this book, The Alchemists, alludes not so much to
the medieval pursuit of creating gold out of base metals, but to this sure-
shot conjuring up of wealth. But, it was not always so.
Modern banking began with holding
reserves of Copper in Sweden. Huge, heavy plates of the metal were kept in
vaults. Then there was Gold, held in reserves in the Bank of England and France
and elsewhere. And right up to Richard Nixon’s time in the Seventies, you could
give in your dollars and receive a fixed, not variable, amount of gold, till it
was noticed the paper dollar had begun to fall in value compared to the gold.
And then finally, the world moved
on to backing its paper money with the perceived strength of the economy and
the credibility of its government, albeit along with some gold. There were
difficult to understand exchange control mechanisms between currencies, but
anything of fixed value that began to falter made speculators “short” it.
This meant borrowing money to be “settled”
or paid for later, at the estimated lower price, thereby making a tidy profit
for the short-seller if he got his speculation right. It forced currencies to “float” against a
designated “basket” of currencies in the main, so that they could go up and
down in value in tandem with the state of their economies.
This book is a compelling read
for the reasonably educated, a masterful romp through the fears, foibles and
prejudices of central bankers and their beneficiaries, their assumptions and
actions, the causes and effects obtained, taken almost from the beginning of
the modern monetary system to date.
Neil Irwin, the young author, is
a Washington Post Columnist, and from 2007 to 2012 he covered the global
financial crisis, recession and its aftermath. Irwin has an MBA from Columbia
University where he was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economics and Business
Journalism. But this book recommends itself for being devoid of jargon. It has
made a difficult subject fascinating, and is delivered with the narrative style
of a reporter telling an engaging story.
The dilemma of the Central Banker
runs along two mainline tracks: In a time when the economy is in trouble, the Central
Bank can raise interest rates, thus tightening the money supply, slowing
growth, and hopefully cutting inflation. Or, it could lower interest rates and
encourage growth and risk a measure of inflation. Other variations in vogue
include stimulus such as Bernanke’s “Quantitative Easing”, meaning issuing
bonds for billions of dollars a month to provide ‘liquidity”.
But great historical events like
hyperinflation that occurred in post-World- War Germany, both times, and the
Great Depression of the 1930s, in the US, tell us that, at extremes, “When
Central Bankers fail, so do the societies they serve”.
However,as Irwin also states, the processes
are evolving, and Central Bankers everywhere do get better at their craft, learning
from their predecessors. They can see better now and contribute substantially
towards the lofty and far-reaching civilizational objective of creating a “Just
and prosperous society”.
(809 words)
September 28th, 2013
Gautam Mukherjee
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