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Episode: Liaquat Ahamed on the Railroad Bubble That Crashed the World | #642
Pub date: 2026-07-31

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Today’s guest is Liaquat Ahamed, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, one of the greatest financial history books ever written. His new book is called 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World.

In today’s episode, Liaquat shares the story of the world’s first truly global financial crisis. He walks through the Rothschild-led bond boom that funded railroads on three continents, the German IPO mania sparked by French war reparations, and the monetary blunder of abandoning silver that turned a crash into twenty years of deflation.

(0:00) Starts

(1:03) The 1873 financial crisis: causes and global impact

(3:25) Railroads and the rise of the Rothschilds

(6:37) Stock market mania and bubbles in Germany

(10:58) The role of precious metals

(15:20) The economic, political, and societal effects of deflation

(26:05) Comparisons to modern financial crises and populist movements

(32:48) Lessons from history: Lords of Finance

(36:46) Modern currency systems

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Past guests include Ed Thorp, Richard Thaler, Jeremy Grantham, Joel Greenblatt, Campbell Harvey, Ivy Zelman, Kathryn Kaminski, Jason Calacanis, Whitney Baker, Aswath Damodaran, Howard Marks, Tom Barton, and many more.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com).

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