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The G-20 summit gets underway today in Pittsburgh, and world leaders are hoping this big economic pow-wow will help stabilize a global economy still struggling back to its feet. For an assessment of how the global financial system is faring — and to gauge if bankers have held off an even Greater Depression than the last one — we turn to Liaquat Ahamed, author of "Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World."

The G-20 summit is underway in London and world leaders are hoping the day will end with a new global deal for tackling the worldwide recession. It’s a moment that reminds our next guest of the end of the year 1930, when the world was 18 months into the Great Depression. Stocks were down about 60 percent, corporate profits had been cut in half, and unemployment had climbed from 4 percent to about 10 percent. Sounds familiar, right? To help us understand what tools world leaders and central bankers can use to the global economy out of a recession and whether a return to the gold standard can help that is Liaquat Ahamed, the Author of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World.

Many people think the Great Depression resulted from a chain of events that no one person of government could control. Liaquat Ahamed reveals that, in fact, a small number of bankers were primarily responsible for the economic meltdown in his book Lords of Finance.