Niall Ferguson
Internationally Renowned
Historian
Named by Time magazine
as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World,” Niall Ferguson’s work
impacts industry, finance, government, and academia. Controversial, expansive,
and eloquent, Ferguson’s talks explore themes that have urgent relevance to the
present as well as the past―the costs and benefits of economic globalization;
the interface between finance and politics; the lessons to be learned from the
British experience of empire; and most recently, the strengths and limitations
of American global power.
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of The World by Niall Ferguson
Professor Niall Ferguson examines the origins of the pillars of the world's financial system, and how behind every great historical phenomenon -- empires and republics, wars and revolutions -- there lies a financial secret.
Episode 1: Dreams of Avarice. From Shylock's pound of flesh to the loan sharks
of Glasgow, from the 'promises to pay' on Babylonian clay tablets to the Medici
banking system, Professor Ferguson explains the origins of credit and debt and
why credit networks are indispensable to any civilization.
Episode 2: Human Bondage. How did finance become the realm of the masters of the universe? Through the rise of the bond market in Renaissance Italy. With the advent of bonds, war finance was transformed and spread to north-west Europe and across the Atlantic. It was the bond market that made the Rothschilds the richest and most powerful family of the 19th century. And today governments are asking it to bail them out.
