The Vandal's Crown: How Rebel Currency Traders Overthrew the World's Central Banks - Hardcover

Gregory J. Millman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0029212871 ISBN 13: 9780029212875

Publisher: Free Press, 1995

Synopsis

Offering a picture of the new financial revolutionaries, the story of a powerful group of private investors reveals how they have outmaneuvered the world's most powerful nations in the burgeoning global financial markets

About this title

From Booklist:

Millman is a writer who has covered the financial markets for eight years for such publications as Forbes, Barron's, and Institutional Investor. His interest here is in two new investment tools that have created convulsions in the worldwide financial community: foreign exchange currency trades and derivatives. Both techniques are quite sophisticated and little understood even by government watchdogs and major financial corporations, but Millman does his best to make this story accessible to the general reader. The bulk of his book focuses on the European currency exchange-rate mechanism. He provides a history of how the competing forces of government and financial interests led to the monetary system that was brought down during the European currency crisis of September 1992 by speculators like George Soros, who made $2 billion in one day. Millman also profiles speculators who have engaged in high-risk transactions using financial derivatives but whose activities never came to light until they had suffered huge losses. David Rouse

From Library Journal:

The 1990s have been the most turbulent years in the history of international finance. A war is going on, says Millman, a "secret revolution" of the currency markets that is akin to the discovery of nuclear power. The invention of currency options and derivatives has allowed currency traders to conquer world markets "like the vandals who conquered Rome's empire." Millman, who has written for Forbes and Barron's, endeavors to explain complex concepts in plain language. First he surveys the long struggle between governments and private markets to control money. Then he explains how corporations trade currencies and the risks involved. He also tells dozens of colorful anecdotes that illustrate his points more vividly than a textbook ever could. This is a history lesson, a finance class, and an entertaining read rolled up in one. Recommended for business collections.?Kris Swank, American Graduate Sch. of Internat. Management Lib., Glendale, Ariz.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0029212871
• ISBN 13: 9780029212875
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 305