William Anthony Hay on Richard Roberts’s “Saving the City”

For the Library of Law and Liberty, JMC fellow, William Anthony Hay reflects on Richard Roberts’s Saving the City: the Financial Crisis of 1914.

Even before the guns of August 1914 shattered the long European peace and marked the opening of a catastrophic war whose consequences linger a century later, a largely forgotten crisis almost threw the global economy into turmoil. Richard Roberts aptly describes the 1914 financial crisis sparked by unfolding political tensions as a hair-raising episode featuring a comprehensive breakdown of market operations that involved a greater systemic challenge than crises in 1866 or 2007-8. It was the first instance of global financial contagion. 

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