Home » Opinion » Book review
Origins of money from Mesopotamia to meltdown
By Ni Tao |
December 12, 2009, Saturday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
NOWHERE in this world, it seems, have more elements of symbolism been attached to money than in ancient China.
From time immemorial, Chinese coins, mostly a small round piece of metal with a square hole in its middle, have captured the imagination of men of letters.
Its shape, it is said, embodies the ideal way suave gentlemen are supposed to carry themselves: exercise flexibility outwardly and adhere to rigid rectitude inwardly.
Seldom is this philosophical musing associated with the money we see today, some of which has become little more than flashing digital lights on electronic screens.
This invisible, mobile and digitized money has also found its way into our modern life in many other forms, forms that have become so familiar that we never take time to trace their origins.
These origins are precisely the subject of historian Niall Ferguson's book, "The Ascent of Money."
Rather than catering to financial experts, this title combines the breadth of a historian's view and the lucidity of a journalist, and it's devoid of the all-too-familiar jargon that turns most readers off.
Ferguson chronicles the evolution of money from its earliest forms, such as clay tablets and animal pelts in Mesopotamia, to the arcane financial products and services that have enmeshed our world dominated by financial behemoths.
The author observes that pursuit in the primitive era of more and more "filthy lucre" played out often in barbarous plundering of aborigines' treasures, one of the most infamous being the Spanish conquistadors' decimation of the Inca Empire for its silver ore.
However, people back then, at least the Spaniards, were way better at pillaging than managing their booty.
Too much money, not lack thereof, precipitated the decline of the Spanish monarchy through frequent outbreaks of inflation.
To mitigate this "bitter happiness," money had to be put to better use than being left to rot inside kings' private vaults. Ever since its genesis, the world's money has been distributed unevenly, with the bulk of it controlled by a privileged few.
Some of these few people, most notably the Medici family in Renaissance Italy, began to run money-lending businesses along the lines that later were recognized as the incipient phase of modern banking.
Soon their European counterparts, the Dutch and the English in particular, followed suit and prospered by employing their financial acumen, Ferguson notes.
The birth and boom of modern banking was followed by the industry's gradual sophistication. Bonds, stocks and various other securities were invented to foster its maturity. But that's also when the industry became a hotbed for widespread speculation and deception.
The tales of how the Rothschild clan and Scottish con man John Law helped crush two gigantic economies (The Confederacy during the US Civil War and France in the early 18th century) through their individual manipulation of the bond market is at once interesting and disturbing.
Ferguson observes, "Financial markets are like the mirrors of mankind ... It is not the fault of the mirror if it reflects our blemishes as clearly as our beauty."
If he is right, then the ascent of money not only creates opportunities for previous have-nots to share wealth, but it also opens Pandora's Box from which the worst aspects of the human condition -- greed and simply more greed -- are unleashed to afflict the industry and cause periodic meltdowns.
As his book was published before the Wall Street debacle, the latest financial market turmoil Ferguson dwells on is the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Since much ink has already been spilled on the causes of this fiasco, Ferguson's analysis of cycles of boom and bust doesn't sound more incisive than his peers'.
But in the book's afterword, he does strike a few stirring notes. In what can be summarized as his Darwinian perception of the capital market, ie, the fittest survive the fight while laggards are ruthlessly weeded out by market force, he observes that "financial history is essentially the result of institutional mutation and natural selection."
Darwinian or not, Ferguson won't find himself alone in airing views that we may consider market fundamentalist. A Chinese best-seller titled "Currency War" actually took this Darwinian doctrine to a higher level.
Author Song Hongbing depicts the global financial market as an outright hoax run by a "cabal of conspirators" -- people who have the ability to pull the world's purse strings and wage a currency war as they see fit -- such as the Rothschilds.
China, he notes, should avoid becoming these predators' next game. And the message hits home.
From time immemorial, Chinese coins, mostly a small round piece of metal with a square hole in its middle, have captured the imagination of men of letters.
Its shape, it is said, embodies the ideal way suave gentlemen are supposed to carry themselves: exercise flexibility outwardly and adhere to rigid rectitude inwardly.
Seldom is this philosophical musing associated with the money we see today, some of which has become little more than flashing digital lights on electronic screens.
This invisible, mobile and digitized money has also found its way into our modern life in many other forms, forms that have become so familiar that we never take time to trace their origins.
These origins are precisely the subject of historian Niall Ferguson's book, "The Ascent of Money."
Rather than catering to financial experts, this title combines the breadth of a historian's view and the lucidity of a journalist, and it's devoid of the all-too-familiar jargon that turns most readers off.
Ferguson chronicles the evolution of money from its earliest forms, such as clay tablets and animal pelts in Mesopotamia, to the arcane financial products and services that have enmeshed our world dominated by financial behemoths.
The author observes that pursuit in the primitive era of more and more "filthy lucre" played out often in barbarous plundering of aborigines' treasures, one of the most infamous being the Spanish conquistadors' decimation of the Inca Empire for its silver ore.
However, people back then, at least the Spaniards, were way better at pillaging than managing their booty.
Too much money, not lack thereof, precipitated the decline of the Spanish monarchy through frequent outbreaks of inflation.
To mitigate this "bitter happiness," money had to be put to better use than being left to rot inside kings' private vaults. Ever since its genesis, the world's money has been distributed unevenly, with the bulk of it controlled by a privileged few.
Some of these few people, most notably the Medici family in Renaissance Italy, began to run money-lending businesses along the lines that later were recognized as the incipient phase of modern banking.
Soon their European counterparts, the Dutch and the English in particular, followed suit and prospered by employing their financial acumen, Ferguson notes.
The birth and boom of modern banking was followed by the industry's gradual sophistication. Bonds, stocks and various other securities were invented to foster its maturity. But that's also when the industry became a hotbed for widespread speculation and deception.
The tales of how the Rothschild clan and Scottish con man John Law helped crush two gigantic economies (The Confederacy during the US Civil War and France in the early 18th century) through their individual manipulation of the bond market is at once interesting and disturbing.
Ferguson observes, "Financial markets are like the mirrors of mankind ... It is not the fault of the mirror if it reflects our blemishes as clearly as our beauty."
If he is right, then the ascent of money not only creates opportunities for previous have-nots to share wealth, but it also opens Pandora's Box from which the worst aspects of the human condition -- greed and simply more greed -- are unleashed to afflict the industry and cause periodic meltdowns.
As his book was published before the Wall Street debacle, the latest financial market turmoil Ferguson dwells on is the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Since much ink has already been spilled on the causes of this fiasco, Ferguson's analysis of cycles of boom and bust doesn't sound more incisive than his peers'.
But in the book's afterword, he does strike a few stirring notes. In what can be summarized as his Darwinian perception of the capital market, ie, the fittest survive the fight while laggards are ruthlessly weeded out by market force, he observes that "financial history is essentially the result of institutional mutation and natural selection."
Darwinian or not, Ferguson won't find himself alone in airing views that we may consider market fundamentalist. A Chinese best-seller titled "Currency War" actually took this Darwinian doctrine to a higher level.
Author Song Hongbing depicts the global financial market as an outright hoax run by a "cabal of conspirators" -- people who have the ability to pull the world's purse strings and wage a currency war as they see fit -- such as the Rothschilds.
China, he notes, should avoid becoming these predators' next game. And the message hits home.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
