The Ascent of Money is Harvard professor Niall
Ferguson's tenth book and was published in 2008.
[1]
It examines the long history of money, credit, and banking. In
it he predicts a financial crisis as a result of the world
economy and in particular the United States using too much
credit. Specifically he cites the China–America dynamic where an
Asian "savings glut" helped create the subprime mortgage crisis
with an influx of easy money.
The Ascent of
Money: A Financial History of the World By Niall Ferguson
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Books from Amazon.co.uk
Documentary
The book was adapted into a television documentary for
Channel 4 in the UK. In the US, it has been aired by PBS.[2]
Episodes
Ep. 1: Dreams of avarice
From Shylock's pound of flesh to the loan sharks of Glasgow,
from the "promises to pay" on Babylonian clay tablets to Medici
banking system. Professor Ferguson explains the origins of
credit and debt and why credit networks are indispensable to any
civilisation.
Ep. 2: Human bondage
How did finance become the realm of the masters of the
universe? Through the rise of the bond market in Renaissance
Italy. With the advent of bonds, war finance was transformed and
spread to north-west Europe and across the Atlantic. It was the
bond market that made the Rothschilds the richest and most
powerful family of the 19th century. And today governments are
asking it to bail them out.
Ep. 3: Blowing bubbles
Why do stock markets produce bubbles and busts? Professor
Ferguson goes back to the origins of the joint stock company in
Amsterdam and Paris. He draws telling parallels between the
current stock market crash and the 18th century Mississippi
Bubble of Scottish financier John Law and the 2001 Enron
bankruptcy. He shows why humans have a herd instinct when it
comes to investment, and why no one can accurately predict when
the bulls might stampede.
Ep. 4: Risky business
Life is a risky business – which is why people take out
insurance. But faced with an unexpected disaster, the state has
to step in. Professor Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New
Orleans to ask why the free market can't provide adequate
protection against catastrophe. His quest for an answer takes
him to the origins of modern insurance in the early 19th century
and to the birth of the welfare state in post-war Japan.
Ep. 5: Safe as houses
It sounded so simple: give state-owned assets to the people.
After all, what better foundation for a property-owning
democracy than a campaign of privatisation encompassing housing?
An economic theory says that markets can't function without
mortgages, because it's only by borrowing against their assets
that entrepreneurs can get their businesses off the ground. But
what if mortgages are bundled together and sold off to the
highest bidder?
Ep. 6: Chimerica
Niall Ferguson investigates the globalisation of the Western
economy and the uncertain balance between the important
component countries of China and the US. In examining the last
time globalisation took hold – before World War One, he finds a
notable reversal, namely that today money is pouring into the
English-speaking economies from the developing world, rather
than out.
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