Includes bibliographical references (p. [571]-575) and index.

In The Confidence Game, journalist Steven Solomon penetrates the closed circles of some of the most powerful and least known figures in the global economy - the central bankers. As interest rates, exchange rates, and financial crises make headlines, the spotlight has increasingly turned on these notoriously secretive unelected men who create and manage the world's money from behind the walls of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the German Bundesbank, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, and the enigmatic Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland. The Confidence Game informs us how central bankers and world leaders dealt with the LDC debt crisis of the early 1980s, the near collapse of the dollar, the 1987 stock market crash and its ripple effect around the world, the boom and bust of the Japanese "bubble economy," and the global recession of the early 1990s. With national politics increasingly held hostage to maintaining the confidence of global financial markets, democratic governments are transferring more and more governing authority and political independence to these unelected central bankers with expectations of economic prosperity that are unlikely to be met.