Sidney Homer (2) (1902–1983)

Opening a Window to Fixed Income Securities of Eras Past
This exceptionally written, highly readable volume, written by a true pioneer in bond trading and fixed income research, covers interest rate trends and lending practices spanning over four millennia of economic history. Despite the paucity of data prior to the Industrial Revolution, the book manages to present a highly detailed analysis of money markets and borrowing practices in major economies. A History of Interest Rates seeks to provide a helicopter perspective of interest rate movements, avoiding anecdotal indications if possible and applying analytical tools such as yield curves and decennial averaging of the available data.

Homer asserts that "the free market long-term rates of interest for any industrial nation, properly charted, provide a sort of fever chart of the economic and political health of that nation." Given the unprecedented rise in asset price volatility and the emergence of extraordinary inflation rates during twentieth-century episodes of economic distress--occurrences which were nearly imponderable during the nineteenth century--it would seem that we are now living in times of eschatological excess, which is actually one of the understated themes in this book's third edition.

This book should be part of the library of every investment analyst, together with such finance classics as Graham and Dodd's Security Analysis and Lefevre's Reminiscences of a Stock Operator.

(Posted in Amazon.com, April 3, 2004)… (meer)