In The Ascent of Money Niall Ferguson discusses the evolution of finance and how it impacted human progression. The book provides a historical look at money from the earliest coin used in modern-day Turkey that dates back as long as 600 BC (p.24) to how money is used today and how it will be used in the future. Ferguson discusses the rise of money and credit, the bond market, the stock market, insurance, real estate and international finance.
Ferguson discusses the origins of money and credit and how it helped shape the modern economy. In Mesopotamia clay tokens were used to record transactions that involved agricultural produce (p.27). Families in Mesopotamia became powerful landowners and lenders to as far as people in Persia (p. 31). Ferguson describes how the Christians viewed lending money as a sin and were not allowed to practice usury (p.35). Jews were allowed to give loans only to non-Jews and charge them
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He describes the Chinese economy and its rapid growth in the past thirty years (p.284). Ferguson argues that China face economic hardship in the near future. History entails that globalization led to inequality and WWI. He believes it foreseeable that China and the United States will end up in a war due to the rapid growth in China and the potential rapid decline. Ferguson believes that finance was made as a necessity for development, but if there is an international globalized system, it results in disaster. He argues 1) major wars can arise even when economic globalization is far advanced, 2) the longer the world goes without major conflict, the harder one becomes to imagine, and, perhaps, the easier one becomes to start 3) when a crisis strikes it causes much more disruption on complacent investors (p.339-340). Ferguson provides an in-depth look of the evolution of finance and an insight on his thoughts on what he sees for the future of financial human