... bracing and closely reported.

You don’t ordinarily turn to a book about the Federal Reserve for comedy, and for the most part Christopher Leonard’s The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy stays true to its genre. Mr. Leonard does, however, include one pointedly humorous moment that sheds light on so much of his subject matter.

There’s something undeniably gratifying about an elegantly crafted morality tale—and the business reporter Christopher Leonard has written a good one, even if you suspect that the full shape of it isn’t quite as smooth as he makes it out to be. The Lords of Easy Money is a fascinating and propulsive story about the Federal Reserve—yes, you read that right. Leonard, in the tradition of Michael Lewis, has taken an arcane subject, rife with the risk of incomprehensibility (or boredom), and built a riveting narrative in which the stakes couldn’t be any clearer.

It’s tough to turn the nuances of monetary policy into personality-driven narrative. But Christopher Leonard has succeeded in doing just that.

Leonard writes vividly about a technical subject.

Leonard doesn’t have much time for formal economics. He plays fast and loose with terminology and economic logic. But we get his point and it is a good one. This has been an era of loose money and the benefits have been very unevenly distributed.

While the subject matter is tough slogging for those without a background in higher economics, Leonard strives to present the issues clearly but without oversimplification, and the patient reader will gain a greater understanding of economic issues that are affecting everyone’s lives..

Leonard shrewdly dissects the policy wrangles roiling the Fed behind its facade of technocratic consensus—he presents a sharp riposte to glowing accounts of former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke’s leadership—while offering a trenchant analysis of how the Fed controls and misshapes the economy. The result is a timely and persuasive challenge to the Fed’s new economic orthodoxy..

The federal banking system has built a house of cards, Leonard cogently warns. Expect it to fall any minute now..