#The ascent of money series

And some people are still pocketing a huge share of that cash. By one measure, the US stock of money is now $8, 700,000,000,000, up 12% since last year. Not knowing this stuff can seriously damage your wealth.Ĭrisis or no crisis, the amount of money sloshing around planet finance still boggles the mind. And that’s why financial history is of more than merely academic interest. As we’ll see, financial history has repeatedly been interrupted by gut-wrenching crises of which today’s is just the latest.įrom the fluctuating prices of the homes we own to the high-speed industrialisation of China, the power of finance is everywhere we look and it affects all of our lives.īut are you in on the secret? Do you know what causes a bank run or a monetary meltdown or a stock market crash? Can you tell the difference between a sub-prime loan and a prime loan? Well, I think these financial technicalities only really make sense once you know where they came from. But money’s rise has never been a smooth, upward ride. Stock markets built empires… and monetary meltdowns made revolutions.įrom Ancient Mesopotamia right down to present day London, the ascent of money has been an indispensable part of the ascent of man. Banks financed the Renaissance while the bond market decided wars. What’s more, I want to reveal financial history as the essential back story behind all history.

#The ascent of money series

How on earth could a little local difficulty with sub-prime mortgages in the United States unleash an economic tsunami big enough to obliterate some of Wall Street’s most illustrious names, to force nationalisations of banks on both sides of the Atlantic and to bring the entire world economy to the very brink of recession, if not downright depression? Shouldn’t this series be called The Descent Of Money? Well, I want to explain to you just how money rose to play such a terrifyingly dominant role in all our lives. The great financial crisis that began in the summer of 2007 has most of us utterly baffled. And while former masters of the universe crash and burn, the rest of us are left worrying if our savings would be safer in a mattress than in a bank. In the past year, it’s certainly broken more than a few of the biggest names on Wall Street and in the City of London. Call it what you like, money can break us or it can make us.

Welcome to the world of money, bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, the readies, the wherewithal.