Customer Reviews

Vandals' Crown: How Rebel Currency Traders Overthrew the World's Central Banks

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Fantastic book, clearly written. A history of the systematic shift in power from governments to asset markets, especially in the Reagonomics era (which includes the 1990's). A 'must', along with "Inventing Money" and "Wall Street Capitalism", for those who want to understand the financial system and it's consequences.

Talk about a book that everyone should read, but no one will, this is it. A terrific, plain language explanation of the origins of money and how understanding money leads to political sophistication and concommitant societal benefits.

This book makes many cogent arguments that deal with war and external defense, interior political and civil stabilty, the societal need for a stable currency, the need for a rule of law to protect private property rights, and the implications of the velocity and movements of global currency trading. It does a great job of explaning financial derivitives, options, inflation, debasement of the currency via political corruption, and financial globalization of trade and currencies.

It contains a marvelous retelling of history thru the eyes of a currency sophisticate, one who incorporates a history of revolutions, and the subsequent rebuildings of the societies that gain prominence in their aftermath.

The backdrop for this fascinating tale is the rise of the micro-chip, the story of the digital revolution. This running-wild tale illustrates how technology has outstripped the ability of dictators to throttle it, and how society has commensurately reaped the benefits. It's a paradigm for the future and deserves to be more widely understood. It has shaken up the strangle hold of one political philosophy ruling the media, and in the future it will reform tort law and academia. It's all here for those willing to study it.

Read it!

This book, although presenting complex concepts, is easy to understand through is storytelling type narrative. It talks very in an engaging and human manner of topics and concepts and written otherwise be considered too esoteric for the layman. This book is good if your interested in finance and trading, as well as the new financial weapons of traders that are (really) more powerful than politicians could ever be. I am probably biased, but the book is so good. It is even relevant today, even years after it was written. The book's analysis of past events, such as the reasons for the rocketing jump in Treasury bond yields in 1994 or the reasons behind the crash of the ERM are excellent.

I finally understand what Options and derivatives are. This is a wonderful, fun book which guides the reader through the history of monetary exchanges. Did I say fun? You have to read his description of Berkeley in the late 60s. Although I lived through it, I never understood the inflation or high interest rates of the 70s and how it related to taking the dollar off the gold standard. Oh yes I can see clearly now!

An interesting narration of the power of currency market and how a handful of speculators can control the destiny of the less powerful economies! Though the book narrates the early 90's episodes , one can easily see the parallel of those incidents to current day crisis stemming from Malaysia and Taiwan to the Ruble disaster to the recent LTCM bailout by the Federal Reserve!! This can add a new dimension to the way people look at investing in the stock market.

Read this well documented book if you are a currency trader and you want to learn a well researched history of currency markets. You'll have a better understanding of "behind closed doors" government intervention and what to watch for on the news. A little difficult to read at times due to its depth, but well worth it for the fundmental knowledge gained.

I found this book difficult to follow at times. However, it was very informative about the history of currency and options trading. This is a very interesting history. A greek philosopher, a secret love affair which resulted in a duel to the death and extensive pilitical corruption all took part in this history. This political corruption involved governments inflating the value of their countrys currency. A few people realized what the government was up to. These people are the "Rebel Currency traders." This book is about their cause to take away the power of the government to set the value of their country's currency, and give the power to the international market. The book is worth reading.

I looked long and hard for this book in several bookstores, including B&N's real life stores. They all kinda blew me off, telling me it was out of print. I requested it on Amazon and it showed up weeks later.

It was well worth the wait. Millman provides an excellent history of currency exchange, and the changing power structure that has altered forever the way governments conduct fiscal policy.

Although it will begin to show it's age soon, it's a fabulous introduction to the topic, and fun read. It's a little goofy in places, but those are easy enough to gloss over.

Vandal's Crown is written with an easy and enjoyable style that makes a potentially difficult subject fascinating. You do not need a lot of prior knowledge about financial instruments to follow it as he clearly explains the basic hows and whys of each of them. Also, he interweaves relevant anecdotal text that has you smiling as you learn. My primary complaint is that the overall structure of the material makes it a bit difficult to see the themes of the book until you are well into the material. Despite this, I highly recommend it and will probably read it a second time.