The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

Using the examples in Chapter 1, explain how money works. What is necessary for something to be used as money? Why can any object be used for money? What is something not mentioned in the chapter that a society has used for money? Your example can be from the past or something in use today.

Ferguson gives several examples of how finance has affected historical events, such as the defeat of Napoleon and the outcome of the US Civil War. What’s another example you can think of? (Look for examples that are not as obvious as the Stock Market Crash of 1929 causing the Great Depression.) Explain what happened and what the role of finance was.

Chapter 2 is on bonds and Chapter 3 is about stocks. What is the relationship between the two? Describe how each normally reacts when the other goes up or down. Is that always the case? Has there been a time when the opposite occurred? Explore why this may have happened.

Using the information in Chapter 3, describe a stock market bubble that is not mentioned in the book. What caused it to occur? How can it be explained using the five stages of a bubble given on Pages 121-22? Analyze its rise and fall in light of these stages.

Chapter 4 describes the history of the welfare state in countries like Britain and Japan. Ferguson writes that “one of the most pronounced economic trends of the past twenty-five years has been for the Western welfare state to be dismantled, reintroducing people with a sharp shock to the unpredictable monster they thought they had escaped from: risk” (211). Do you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing? Using examples both from the book and of countries not mentioned in the book, make a case for either keeping strong welfare system or minimizing it.

The book describes the importance of China in today’s economy, and that China has grown to challenge the economic dominance of the United States. Yet China closed itself to the global economy in the mid-20th century. How did it rise so fast in so short a time? It’s a communist country that not long ago had a planned economy. Explain what steps it took in the last forty years or so to foster such an economic boom.

Globalization is portrayed in the book as largely positive because of the free flow of capital it allows. Recently, however, there has been a backlash against globalization in the United States and other countries. Brexit and the renegotiation of NAFTA are just two examples of this. Do you think globalization is good or bad? Why?

Milton Friedman was a Nobel Prize-winning economist mentioned in the book for his work in Chile. What impact did his theories have on the United States during the last forty years? Explain what he advocated, which presidents adopted his ideas, and how his ideas influenced government policy.