''The Money Lenders'' is a 1981 book on finance by British journalist
Anthony Sampson.
It looks at the history of
banking from the
Renaissance to a meeting of the
International Monetary Fund in
Washington, D.C. in 1980, with an emphasis on the interaction of finance with international diplomacy.
The bank discusses the formative years of three
Wall Street
Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...
giants: The
Chase Manhattan,
Citibank
Citibank, N. A. (N. A. stands for " National Association") is the primary U.S. banking subsidiary of financial services multinational Citigroup. Citibank was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, and later became First National City ...
and the
Bank of America. The book then discusses the creation of
Federal Reserve system in 1913, the
Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the successive years of the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
.
The book was largely inspired by the work of the Brandt Commission on "North–South relations." Mr. Sampson served as editorial advisor to the chairman,
Willy Brandt, on that commission.
''The Money Lenders'' begins with a vivid description of the scene in the lobby of the Sheraton Washington Hotel during that 1980 IMF meeting, which Sampson labels "the most superior of all salesmen's conventions."
Notes
1981 non-fiction books
Finance books
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