AscentOfMoney

• Some interesting points. Too much fluff. Bailed after ch3
• Financial services all over the world were disproportionately provided by ethnic or religious minorities.
• The ascent of money has been critical to the ascent of man. The evolution of credit and debt was as important as any other technological innovation. The triumph of the US in the 19C was inseparable from advances in insurance mortgage fiance and consumer credit.
• Money amplifies our tendency to overact, to swing from exuberance to deep depression.
• The Roman system of coinage outlive the Roman empire. Charlemagne was still quoting prices in silver denarii.
• Interest was a concept which was probably derived from the natural increase of a herd of livestock
• Cursed with the abundance of precious metal, Spain failed to develop a sophisticated banking system. The idea that money was really about credit, not metal, never caught on in Madrid.
• Bankruptcy; One of the great puzzles is that the worlds most successful economy seems to be built on a foundation of easy economic failure.
• Bonds allowed governments and large corporations to borrow money from a a broad range of people and institutions and not just banks (Behind the creation of credit, this was the 2nd great revolution in money)
• The Rothschilds had decided the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars by putting their weight behind Britain. Then they would help decide the outcome of the American Civil War by choosing to sit on the sidelines.
• The fall of Vicksburg is always seen as one of the great turning points in the Civil war, but the decisive one was the fall of New Orleans which choked off the finances of the Confederacy.
• There was a time when academic historians felt squeamish about claiming that lessons could be learned from history; this is a feeling unknown to economists.
• Sometimes the most important historical events are the non-events: the things that did not occur.

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