Posted on 08/22/2012 8:54:43 AM PDT by Lorianne
Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance.
http://www.niallferguson.com
Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What's more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history.
Through Ferguson's expert lens familiar historical landmarks appear in a new and sharper financial focus. Suddenly, the civilization of the Renaissance looks very different: a boom in the market for art and architecture made possible when Italian bankers adopted Arabic mathematics. The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the world's first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. And the origins of the French Revolution are traced back to a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scot murderer.
With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What's the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do?
This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can't provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis.
Perhaps most important, The Ascent of Money documents how a new financial revolution is propelling the world's biggest countries, India and China, from poverty to wealth in the space of a single generation—an economic transformation unprecedented in human history.
Yet the central lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble bursts—sooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers, sooner or later greed flips into fear. And that's why, whether you're scraping by or rolling in it, there's never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.
Epidodes 1-5 (Full Documentary)
The origins of the world trading system is one of the themes of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle.
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Does he go into the destruction of wealth by the creation of the Fed in 1913, the introduction of fiat currency in place of a gold or silver standard? I doubt it.
Home viewing bookmark.
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Thanks for posting . . .after viewing just 2 of the 5 episodes, I can say it is entertaining as well as informative. Detailing this journey in the context of following the time line clarifies some untoward characterizations absorbed by society over time.
BTW . . .The narrator of this video series, Niall Ferguson is also author of the recent controversial Newsweek cover/featured article titled, “Hit the Road, Barack - Why we need a new president”. He also recently married and fathered a child with Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Thank you! I didn’t know about his marriage to Ayaan Hirsi Ali
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