In The Ascent of Money Niall Ferguson provides a proper perspective of the Credit Crunch as part of more than three thousand years history of money and finance. It will be readily understood by anyone with an interest in the workings of the financial system. It also makes a good story and takes the reader from the earliest days of money to the complex, modern financial devices that few, if anybody, understand.

Dreams of Avarice: Money, Metal, Credit, and the Rise of Banking

Originally money was almost entirely based around coinage so that control of precious metals was a secret of wealth. Access to South American gold and silver made Spain wealthy but also led to its marginalisation as finance moved away from coinage to banking and the use of financial instruments based on promises and trust.

As Fergusson says in The Ascent of Money “Money is not metal. It is trust inscribed” and as this became understood money took new forms such as banknotes which in the United Kingdom bear the phrase “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of ...” However the earliest forms of money were just such promises inscribed into clay tablets in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) around 1650 BC.

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