The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
by Niall Ferguson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Niall FergusonEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-11-13
ISBN: 1594201927
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Penguin Press
Book Reviews of The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
Book Review: Chimera's Descent
Summary: 3 Stars
Professor Ferguson has written a thoughtful book, guiding the general public through the history of the financial world. The most interesting part is the first half where he takes us through the development of the financial instruments, such as currency, bonds, stocks, and corporations which are so common place today. We meet the entrepreneurs of the middle ages and colonial times, who developed the mechanisms to finance the exploration of the world, enabling the establishment of new industries in the Americas and Asia. Equally important is how these events of centuries ago established London as a financial nexus and the British empire as the greatest in the world. The story is not all good, these days were rife with gun-boat diplomacy, brutal colonialization, slavery, and narco-economics.
In the second part of the The Ascent of Money, Ferguson shifts gears into the modern era. He trods a lot of worn-out ground as he moves into the LTCM bail-out, George Soros' battles with central banks, the US S&L restructuring, micro-finance, the stock market collapses of the 20th and 21st centuries, and fiascos of the investment banks leading to the demise of Barings and others. His analysis of the LTCM is important as he shows their fundamental flaw in not considering enough financial history to really calculate the risks inherent in their leveraged positions. Ferguson wrote this in April 2008 so he does not have the history of the recent finacial debacle to consider but he is prescient in seeing things were already rotten.
The final section deals with his concerns about the current relationship between the US and the PRC. Clearly the trend of Chinese savers loaning massive sums to US consumers, property owners, and governments is not healthy. Unfortunately the situation is only getting worse as the US government embarks on new stimulus programs, funded by the Chinese. Ferguson suggests that we are entering a deflationary bubble (similar to the Japanese experience of the 1990's) that could continue for another decade.
Summary of The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
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.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.
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