Ascent of Money
Ascent of Money;
The Financial History of the World
Samuel Dada
Survey of Fiscal Management Cameron University, Summer 2013
Abstract
The author, Niall Ferguson offers a comprehensive collection of anecdotes and observations about the development of finance. He begins with a brief discussion of pre-money societies. Then, he carries you through the birth of banking in Renaissance Italy, the 18th-century Mississippi and South Sea bubbles, the role of Nathan Mayer Rothschild in the Napoleonic Wars, and the 20th-century transition from the gold standard to free-market derivatives and currency trading. He reveals financial history as the essential back-story behind all history. The evolution of credit and debt was as important as any technological innovation in the rise of civilization, from ancient Babylon to the silver mines of Bolivia. Banks provided the material basis for the splendors of the Italian Renaissance, while the bond market was the decisive factor in conflicts from the Seven Years' War to the American Civil War.
Perhaps most important, the videos document 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.
From Bullion to Bubbles Examples in human history have demonstrated the need for money, and the availability of it, to smear the mechanics of economy. Barter is less efficient, and no money-less society has ever proven sustainable (both Communism and the Incas relied on brutal centralist absolutism and used human labor as currency). Hunter-gatherers will not trade, but battle for resources.
As far back as 600 BC, coins were used in modern-day Turkey. Greeks, Romans and later Chinese (221 BC) standardized coins as unit of account (Niall, 2008). Chronic lack of silver in the old world was only solved by the New world’s conquest (rich
The Financial History of the World
Samuel Dada
Survey of Fiscal Management Cameron University, Summer 2013
Abstract
The author, Niall Ferguson offers a comprehensive collection of anecdotes and observations about the development of finance. He begins with a brief discussion of pre-money societies. Then, he carries you through the birth of banking in Renaissance Italy, the 18th-century Mississippi and South Sea bubbles, the role of Nathan Mayer Rothschild in the Napoleonic Wars, and the 20th-century transition from the gold standard to free-market derivatives and currency trading. He reveals financial history as the essential back-story behind all history. The evolution of credit and debt was as important as any technological innovation in the rise of civilization, from ancient Babylon to the silver mines of Bolivia. Banks provided the material basis for the splendors of the Italian Renaissance, while the bond market was the decisive factor in conflicts from the Seven Years' War to the American Civil War.
Perhaps most important, the videos document 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.
From Bullion to Bubbles Examples in human history have demonstrated the need for money, and the availability of it, to smear the mechanics of economy. Barter is less efficient, and no money-less society has ever proven sustainable (both Communism and the Incas relied on brutal centralist absolutism and used human labor as currency). Hunter-gatherers will not trade, but battle for resources.
As far back as 600 BC, coins were used in modern-day Turkey. Greeks, Romans and later Chinese (221 BC) standardized coins as unit of account (Niall, 2008). Chronic lack of silver in the old world was only solved by the New world’s conquest (rich