In chapter 2, central bankers and their world, I first present the most important protagonists and a few other actors. They include Montagu Norman and Harry Siepmann of Bank of England, George L. Harrison of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Francis Rodd of the Bank for International Settlements. I discuss their background and worldview as they were headed into the 1931 crisis. Having presented these main actors and a few others, I proceed to present their world and how they saw it in 1930 and early 1931. The world was already in the midst of the great depression and private bankers as well as central bankers and other decision-makers were aware that they were dealing with crisis and radical uncertainty that might bring about the end of the gold standard and capitalism. I discuss the actors view of the "present world depression" and how they viewed the gold standard and their options as they got ready for trying to save the world from economic disaster.

Chapter 17, Exit (September 16 - October 23). In this chapter I follow the last few days before Britain leaves gold on September 21 after having exhausted the credits on the peg to the US dollar. The decision makes sterling decline by 20 per cent, which lead to massive losses not least for the Banque de France. J.P. Morgan is unhappy as well, seeing how the credits are gone with nothing to show for them. As Norman returns to Britain and the Bank, he is unhappy with the situation and Bank of England’s bad reputation following the devaluation. Rodd and Siepmann struggle to make sense of the situation, and Norman - some years later - expresses that it was all in vain. He was left ’a bitterly disappointed man.’ The narrative ends with this chapter.

This chapter challenges the conventional chronology of the interwar era that distinguishes the conservative 1920s, when policy makers were preoccupied with the restoration of the pre-First World War liberal economic order, and the revolutionary 1930s, when they reacted to the global economic and financial crisis by pursuing isolationism, state interventionism, and trade blocs. Taking the example of Hungary’s monetary management in the 1920s, it shows that there was more continuity between the two decades than is usually recognized. Due to the dislocations arising in the wake of the war and subsequent peace arrangements, the fragmentation of empires into small ethnonationalist states, and revolutionary and counterrevolutionary political and social upheavals, institutional and policy adjustments in the direction of what was to become mainstream in the 1930s were already budding in the 1920s. The chapter provides empirical evidence of this sneaking nationalization in Hungary’s monetary management, manifest in a combination of adherence to the rules of the gold standard game, on the one hand, and capital-flow neutralization, on the other, depending on what was appropriate to stimulate or sustain domestic economic activity.