The Ascent of Money

All Episodes 2008

  • Ended
  • #<Network:0x00007f27cc0349e0>
  • 2008-11-17T00:00:00Z
  • 1h
  • 6h (6 episodes)
  • United Kingdom
  • English
  • Chimerica Media
  • Documentary
In this six-part series, historian Niall Ferguson tells the story of money and the rise of global finance. Bringing context and understanding to the current economic crisis, he reveals how the history of finance has been punctuated by gut-wrenching crashes. Each episode shows how a big bang in the ascent of money has changed the course of history. Note: also tt1358383

6 episodes

Series Premiere

2008-11-17T00:00:00Z

1x01 Dreams Of Avarice

Series Premiere

1x01 Dreams Of Avarice

  • 2008-11-17T00:00:00Z1h

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 civilisation.

2008-11-24T00:00:00Z

1x02 Human Bondage

1x02 Human Bondage

  • 2008-11-24T00:00:00Z1h

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.

2008-12-01T00:00:00Z

1x03 Blowing Bubbles

1x03 Blowing Bubbles

  • 2008-12-01T00:00:00Z1h

Why do stock markets produce bubbles and busts? Professor Ferguson goes back to the origins of the joint stock company in Amsterdam and Paris. He draws telling parallels between the current stock market crash and the 18th-century Mississippi Bubble of Scottish financier John Law and the 2001 Enron bankruptcy. He shows why humans have a herd instinct when it comes to investment, and why no one can accurately predict when the bulls might stampede.

2008-12-08T00:00:00Z

1x04 Risky Business

1x04 Risky Business

  • 2008-12-08T00:00:00Z1h

Life is a risky business – which is why people take out insurance. But faced with an unexpected disaster, the state has to step in. Professor Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can't provide adequate protection against catastrophe. His quest for an answer takes him to the origins of modern insurance in the early 19th century and to the birth of the welfare state in post-war Japan.

2008-12-15T00:00:00Z

1x05 Safe As Houses

1x05 Safe As Houses

  • 2008-12-15T00:00:00Z1h

It sounded so simple: give state-owned assets to the people. After all, what better foundation for a property-owning democracy than a campaign of privatisation encompassing housing? An economic theory says that markets can't function without mortgages, because it's only by borrowing against their assets that entrepreneurs can get their businesses off the ground. But what if mortgages are bundled together and sold off to the highest bidder?

2008-12-22T00:00:00Z

1x06 Chimerica

1x06 Chimerica

  • 2008-12-22T00:00:00Z1h

Niall Ferguson investigates the globalisation of the Western economy and the uncertain balance between the important component countries of China and the US. In examining the last time globalisation took hold – before World War One, he finds a notable reversal, namely that today money is pouring into the English-speaking economies from the developing world, rather than out.

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