Johan Van Overtveldt

I don't really know much at all about economics, so this book served as an easy introduction to what looks like an esoteric subject from the outside. It was succinct, clear, and focused, and did a good job of explaining the broad approaches of central banking policy towards economic crises, starting mostly from the theories set out by the economists Thornton and Bagehot, through the Great Depression and the 2008 crisis, then COVID-19, and in the end spends a substantial amount of time talking about where we are now, and what risks the current monetary policy poses to our future. A significant amount of criticism is levied at the "2% inflation target," while still giving a decent overview of how and why it became so prominent.

I don't know if I would want to read this if I were prone to anxiety. Ultimately this reads as something of a warning that the fixes we've put in to prevent disaster previously are starting to pile up and cause their own problems.The historical portion of this book is a great summary.

Not knowing much about the subject, I can't say how much was sacrificed to simplify the topic however, and I can't say whether Overtveldt's diagnosis of our current situation is accurate either, but I can say that the book makes good sense and puts out a decent argument.… (more)

I was excited to read this book because I wanted to learn more on how banks work and global economy and how they worked together. I have no background in banking, finance and global economy but I learned a lot. It took me while to read this book, the author wrote about various events & bank. To get a better understanding what the author was referring to I had to do my research, looking up terms-,ECB, IMF
people- Raghuram Ragan, Mario Draghi and historical events- 1929 stock market crash, 2007-2009 global financial crisis and 2008 Lehman Brother failure.

The author does a great job telling the history, mind set behind some of world's biggest financial crisis and how central banks supports the global economy.… (more)