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The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World |  | Author: Niall Ferguson
Publisher: Penguin Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Rating:  145 reviews
Sales Rank: 12081
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 432
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.5
ISBN: 1594201927
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.09
EAN: 9781594201929
ASIN: 1594201927
Publication Date: November 13, 2008
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Product Description
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, its the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, its the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. Whats more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history.
Through Fergusons 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 worlds 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? Whats 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 cant 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 worlds biggest countries, India and China, from poverty to wealth in the space of a single generationan economic transformation unprecedented in human history.
Yet the central lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble burstssooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers, sooner or later greed flips into fear. And thats why, whether youre scraping by or rolling in it, theres never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 145
 Should be required reading! February 28, 2010
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is an excellent primer on the history of the financial mechanics that have been handed down to us today. I think it should be used (in conjunction with the video program, and a structured course to get over the bumps noted by others, although I had no issues following along) as the basis of Economics 101 in high schools, or even grade schools.
The Ascent of Money February 15, 2010
Bennett E. Werner (Ohio)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read this book for a book club (ie, I didn't choose it). I expected it to be dry and difficult. Just the opposite, I could hardly put it down. Ferguson's writing is clear and concise. His knowledge of financial history is encyclopedic and dotted with interesting anecdotes. The book is organized well. My only criticism is that, in the later chapters as he gets into derivatives, I had trouble following the financial nuances, but then, so did Wall Street in 2007!
I learned a lot and enjoyed learning it.
 A Terrible Book February 10, 2010
Jiang Xueqin (Toronto, Canada)
I certainly hope that Niall Ferguson, a professor of financial history at Oxford and Harvard, wrote his book "The Ascent of Money" in a flash of fury because it reads and feels like an unedited first draft. The writing is clumsy, silly, and at times offensive and insulting. Consider this sort of lame stupid writing more suited for a pornographic film than for a study of Western financial history: "So how did 'Mr. Bond' become so much more powerful than the Mr Bond created by Ian Fleming? Why, indeed, do both kind of bond have a licence to kill?" Worse is the reasoning, which is sloppy and too reverential of free market economics.
The first part of the book actually reads decently. Mr. Ferguson promised a popular book that explains the importance of financial innovation in the progress of Western civilization, and that he expertly does. He articulates how the development of bonds was a by-product of the Europeans' need to wage war. Indeed, he points out that Britain defeated Napoleon and the American North defeated the South because the former could finance their war from the international debt markets whereas the former had to rely on taxation and printing money. Mr. Ferguson also explains quite clearly the rise of companies and the stock market in Amsterdam because of the need for Dutch merchants to limit their risk and liability in international trade.
Where the book falls apart is when Mr. Ferguson begins to discuss the current financial crisis. Obviously an adamant admirer of Milton Friedman and the Chicago and Harvard free market school of economics, Mr. Ferguson, like most of his conservative brethren, are still in denial about what happened. He thinks that today's recession is caused by uncertainty, human behavior, and "evolution" (finance is constantly evolving and progressing, but this is also a chaotic process of "creative destruction"). Nowhere does he blame the silly utopian economics that justified the wholesale deregulation of American finance that permitted the creation of destructive debt instruments, predatory lending, and corrupt corporate practices that inevitably created this financial meltdown. More than anything today's economic crisis is a product of inadequate government regulation, supervision, and monitoring, especially on the part of the Federal Reserve. But Mr. Ferguson can't possibly admit this (there can be no questioning of the free market model!), and prefers to digress or attack his ideological enemies -- John Perkins who wrote "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz -- for their shoddy reasoning.
But consider this sort of statement from Mr. Ferguson: "The price of rescue by the state is control by the state, and already American banks are finding their freedom of action limited with respect to the compensation of executives and the hiring of foreigners." Mr. Ferguson is clearly indignant that the government, after saving the financial system from its own greed and incompetence, would dare to puts its dirty hands into the market.
All in all, the entire book is a pointless endeavor, and for a more in-depth understanding of today's economic crisis read John Cassidy's "How Markets Fail."
excellent read February 7, 2010
my deco
This was given as a gift to someone who loves history and the financial world! Great read!!!
Complex Subject Made Easy January 30, 2010
Robert Elden
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Mr. Ferguson has undertaken to tackle some pretty weighty subjects and yet made them thoroughly interesting and easy to understand. He is a joy to read as his writing is clear, precise and informative - all at same time. I recommend him to one and all!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 145
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