If you actually want to understand something about the kinds of financial crises and currency quagmires our world has apparently stumbled into, you should watch the four-part, four hour The Ascent of Money series that’s running on PBS starting July 8.
It’s an expansion of a two hour show done with the series’ writer Niall Ferguson early this year, and it’s essential thinking matter for anyone relying on money to pay their bills, pay for their retirement, to be given to them in exchange for binloads of canola and wheat, etc. and with which to pay input bills. In other words – every farmer should watch this series.
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Of course, it would have been better to have read the book when it came out last year, neatly timed to go along with the world’s financial implosion, but this is a good, sitting-on-the-couch-with-a-bowl-of-Doritos way of getting some of the most insightful economic thinking into your head.
Ferguson, about who I have written before, is a brilliant British historian who focuses on economic history, which he argues is the real bedrock of modern historical developments.
Unlike 98.4 percent of economists, he speaks English and knows how to communicate with biological entities called “humans.” Also, unlike 99 percent of economists, he doesn’t think the world is a big supply and demand equation that can be jerry-rigged with the right input numbers to spit out a number that will reflect the true state of the world. He’s a historian, so he sees business and economic history through the lens of real human behavior and in the light of past human reactions to economic circumstances.
His series is a look at: how money arose, what it is and what can go wrong with it; where recessions, depressions, booms come from in relation to money; why currency crises occur and how to watch out for them; etc.
If you’re of a left-leaning nature, you might not hear much of what you’ll hear from Ferguson. He’s a modern British conservative and doesn’t think government spending and punitive regulations are the answers to the kinds of crises we repeatedly walk our economies into. In fact it’s the monkeying-around of the marketplace and games with money-printing and credit expansion that he blames for many problems we have and do suffer.
But there’s also lots to annoy the neo-con type righties, who don’t escape his sharp wit for their recklessness of the past three decades, so this isn’t some doctrinaire product of the unchastened Bushites.
And if you’re a “just wear a smile” type of optimist who always thinks the next bull market has just begun, you won’t like his outlook: he thinks we’re in a depression and compares this recent equity rally and present optimism with April, 1931, just before the stock market crashed again.
But Ferguson is informed, brilliant, entertaining and – with this series on PBS for the next four weeks – readily available. Take advantage of it. Watch.
