- ISBN13: 9780143116172
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
A richly original look at the origins of money and how it makes the world go ’round
Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of our financial system, from its genesis in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance. What’s more, Ferguson reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history, arguing that the evolution of credit and debt was as important as any technol… More >>
#1 by Izaak VanGaalen on June 20th, 2010
Quote
Niall Ferguson has written an easily accessible and very entertaining history of finance, ranging from the clay tokens of Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago to the hedge funds of today. The title of this book has apparently been modelled on Jacob Bronowski’s “The Ascent of Man,” and like that book it will be made into a television series. Being a television celebrity is not something that wins the admiration of one’s peers in the history profession, to say the least. But those little rebukes are relatively mild compared to the scorn he received for his political views in Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power and Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. In those works he argued that empire was beneficial not only to the mother country but the dominated countries as well. In this work he chronicles not only the history of money but also makes a case for liberalized finance.
Ferguson examines the financial subplot behind some of the major historical powers such as the role of money in ancient Mesopotamia, the denarius in Roman society, and gold and silver in the civilization of the Incas. He is very good in his descriptions of financial families like the Medicis and the Rothchilds, and how they became banking dynasties. Another memorable episode was the rise of Amsterdam as the world’s financial center and the center’s subsequent shift to London.
History is also filled with financial disasters of which we are well aware today. Ferguson tells the story of John Law and how he became France’s head of finance. He engineered a financial bubble that took them several generations to overcome. Making matters worse, it occurred at the same time as the British South Sea Bubble.
Also instructive is the history of the first great globalization (1870-1914). (For this period also read Jeffrey Frieden’s Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century.) The world had become so economically interdependent that the pundits believed the possibility of war between great powers had been eliminated. This sentiment was famously expressed in “The Great Illusion” by Norman Angell.
Although this book was written before the current economic crisis, the last chapter is very prescient. “From Empire to Chimerica” tells of the symbiotic relationship between China and America. The combined country “accounts for just over a 10th of the world’s land surface, a quarter of its population, and a third of its economic output, and more than half of the global economic growth of the last eight years”. This relationship, in which China saves and America spends, and in which China’s savings is used to enable America to spend even more, is clearly unsustainable. Ferguson sees this savings glut as the cause of the current subprime crisis. That, in my humble opinion, was one of the causes; there were many bad actors involved in this catastrophe, citizen-borrowers included.
Although it is not obvious to everyone in the midst of a crisis, Ferguson correctly points out that financial engineering is one of the great forces behind human progress. The history of finance is a process of creative destruction. Financial risk-taking is necessary for economic expansion and human development, and Ferguson does a good job in making the case. Too bad it reads like a script made for the History Channel.
Rating: 4 / 5
#2 by G. Murray on June 21st, 2010
Quote
When I was given this book, my heart leapt because I know Niall Ferguson is a robustly contrarian, sharp, articulate and well-informed historian, but it sank immediately that I saw that the book, like many of his recent works, was again based on a television series. Ferguson is a man of genuine talent; it is a shame he chosen to prostitute that talent. No doubt “The Ascent of Money” made for a TV show of far more than average quality, but the book is necessarily scrappy and somewhat shallow. It seems to evolve according to the picturesqueness of certain locations (the televisual imperative), rather than the logic of the argument. I would like to see the television link flagged much more prominently on the cover so one is made aware in advance that this is not a serious work of history, but a potboiler designed to raise funds so that Ferguson can boost his earning power to the levels of equally (or less) brainy college contemporaries who went into finance or the law. Frankly, I was disappointed. I hope Ferguson will get back to being a proper historian soon.
Rating: 3 / 5
#3 by Sirin on June 21st, 2010
Quote
Angry about the bankers going bust? Ferguson starts from this premise to educate the reader into the history behind how international finance got to its current position. Beginning with loan tablets in ancient Mesopotamia, Ferguson traces the origins of government lending, the stock market, the bond market, the mysteries of quants, and a fascinating final chapter on how China and America have up to now been in a symbiotic relationsip with Chinese goods funding American avarice, but this may not be for much longer.
Ferguson’s books have been getting bigger and more ambitious the more famous as he has become. With this comes a necessary amount of reductive argument, lurching from Glasgow loan sharks, to Potosi silver mines, to the reckless Scotsman John Law who set up a French state bank in the 18th Century which ended up ruining its investors. This is probably because, like all Ferguson’s recent books, it is a TV tie in.
Ferguson is also very much in favour of globalisation and international finance. He plugs the book in the introduction as a teaching tool for those who are sceptical or shaky of the systems that drive money around the world. Wise up, or be a loser is his essential message. This book was finished just before the great bank collapse, and as a result doesn’t have much to say on the current crisis.
This kind of chest thumping history is clearly very lucrative for Ferguson, but after his brilliant early books on the Rothschilds and the First World War, one can’t help thinking with his mid career media don posing, he has acted a bit like the hedge fund managers such as Ken Griffin he idolises in this book who gained great wealth at the expense of something more solid, decent and lasting.
Rating: 4 / 5
#4 by Balint Kacsoh on June 21st, 2010
Quote
When I saw the interview with Niall Ferguson on CNN, I thought that I would get an insightful book that would enable me to understand and navigate the current economic crisis. After all, Ferguson is a Harvard professor (thus he is superbly credentialed), and the interview suggested that he had the foresight of the coming events.
Yet the book turned out to be an utter disappointment. On the surface, the book seems to have a good structure. The chapters logically follow a sequence: the history of money, credit, bonds, stocks, insurance, real estate, globalization, hedge funds, computer models of investing, and behavioral finance. The text is easy to read and crafty. However, the chapters fall short on several accounts. The chapters present selected events in the history of their respective subject rather than a broad overview. I did not expect a comprehensive history, but the selection was minimalist, often skewed, and the events were more often than not presented in a disjointed manner. There was some semblance of logic tying them together, but one had to know way more than the average reader to see the connection. If the reader had that kind of knowledge, the book did not offer much. Without the knowledge, the book’s logic was lacking and, indeed, contained gaps and jumps.
Even before I reached the end of the book, I developed the feeling that the Author’s pretty shameless primary goal was to write a book that can sell many copies, and make money. It is a quickly assembled patchwork that, in spite of the polished writing, is mostly useless fluff. There are much better books on the subject that will explain the concept of money and the current economic crisis. (Just an example: Robert Prechter’s Conquer The Crash, published in 2002.) Since the interview on CNN, I heard additional interviews with Niall Ferguson (e.g., on NPR). The timing of the publication and the marketing efforts are way superior to the qualities of the book.
If you can borrow this book from someone, you will only waste some time by reading it, but at least you will save your money. This book is certainly not worth having on your shelf – in the long run it will only collect dust, and you will not open it again. Probably you would be better off not reading it at all (there are better alternatives). The knowledge you will gain is most likely not proportionate with the time invested (wasted) in the reading. The two stars I gave might be a little too generous, especially considering that one expects a much better book from a Harvard professor. However, I have to give credit for the style and a modicum of usefulness.
Rating: 2 / 5
#5 by Brian Brockmeyer on June 21st, 2010
Quote
Niall Ferguson’s THE ASCENT OF MONEY, as its subtitle promises, is a broad overview of financial history, from the dawn of the first form of currency in Ancient Mesopotamia to the proliferation of complex residential asset-backed securities early in the twenty-first century. In six chapters, Ferguson traces the genesis and evolution of the pillars of modern finance: currency, bonds, corporate stock, insurance, and real estate. A final chapter focuses on the US and China’s symbiotic debtor-creditor relationship, and an afterword discusses the current global recession and includes a somewhat strained evolutionary analogy comparing financial development to natural selection.
The objective here is to illuminate the modern economic system by surveying its historical origins, and to a large extent, Ferguson succeeds. The book is targeted to a lay audience and such readers are certain to walk away from a reading with an enhanced understanding of modern economics. The author generally takes the time to explain even elementary concepts in an effective manner, but there are also several maddening instances throughout where he casually references somewhat arcane metrics and complex ideas (e.g., VaR) without any explanation as to their meaning and significance. In this respect, Ferguson can be at times simultaneously too basic for the advanced reader and too complex for the novice.
Never dry reading, the narrative flows freely over its 358 pages, with perhaps the most interesting and edifying chapters being those on the bond, equity, and real estate markets. I especially enjoyed Ferguson’s exploration of the five stages of “bubble” (displacement, euphoria, mania, distress, and revulsion).
Ultimately, though, the book will be of most benefit to those with a casual interest in economics, as it is entirely descriptive and not prescriptive. Ferguson never really offers anything resembling a thesis, nor does he reveal his own views except for the most fleeting of moments when singing the virtues of late-19th/early-20th century imperialism. He is focused exclusively on reporting, not analyzing. As such, THE ASCENT OF MONEY, though well-written, does not transcend its status as a historical chronicle and will be of trivial value to those seeking a sophisticated economic treatise.
Rating: 3 / 5