Niall Ferguson · 442 pages
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“The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“there really is no such thing as ‘the future’, singular. There are only multiple, unforeseeable futures, which will never lose their capacity to take us by surprise.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“perennial truths of financial history. Sooner or later every bubble bursts. Sooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers. Sooner or later greed turns to fear.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“Large numbers of under-capitalized banks were a recipe for financial instability, and panics were a regular feature of American economic life - most spectacularly in the Great Depression, when a major banking crisis was exacerbated rather than mitigated by a monetary authority that had been operational for little more than fifteen years.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“Although the court recognizes his right to insist on his bond - to claim his pound of flesh - the law also prohibits him from shedding Antonio’s blood.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“The subprime butterfly had flapped its wings and triggered a global hurricane.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“By discouraging saving and encouraging consumption, accelerating inflation had stimulated output and employment”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“and a spike in extreme meteorological events,”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“When bond prices fall, interest rates soar, with painful consequences for all borrowers.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“armed with an AK47 - a gift from Fidel Castro, the man he had sought to emulate. As the tanks rumbled towards him, Allende realized it was all over and, cornered in what was left of his quarters, shot himself.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“Buying a 100,000 yen bond keeps the capital sum safe while also providing regular payments to the saver. To be precise, the bond pays a fixed rate or ‘coupon’ of 1.5 per cent: 1,500 yen a year in the case of a 100,000 yen bond. But the market interest rate or current yield is calculated by dividing the coupon by the market price, which is currently 102,333 yen: 1,500 ÷ 102,333 = 1.47 per cent.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“man who had exchanged his $1,000 of savings for gold in 1970, while the gold window was still ajar, would have received just over 26.6 ounces of the precious metal. At the time of writing, with gold trading at close to $1,000 an ounce, he could have sold his gold for $26,596.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“suppose they began to worry about the health of the Japanese currency, the yen, in which bonds are denominated and in which the interest is paid. In such circumstances, the price of the bond would drop as nervous investors sold off their holdings. Buyers would only be found at a price low enough to compensate them for the increased risk of a Japanese default or currency depreciation.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“A typical contract in the archives of the merchant Francesco Datini (c. 1335-1410) stipulates that the insurers agree to assume the risks ‘of God, of the sea, of men of war, of fire, of jettison, of detainment by princes, by cities, or by any other person, of reprisals, of arrest, of whatever loss, peril, misfortune, impediment or sinister that might occur, with the exception of packing and customs’ until the insured goods are safely unloaded at their destination.13”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“Japan in the 1930s became a garrison state.43 But it was one which carried within it the promise of a ‘warfare-welfare state’, offered social security in return for military sacrifice.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“banks have evolved since the days of the Medici precisely in order (as the 3rd Lord Rothschild succinctly put it), to ‘facilitate the movement of money from point A, where it is, to point B, where it is needed’.48 Credit and debt, in short, are among the essential building blocks of economic development, as vital to creating the wealth of nations as mining, manufacturing or mobile telephony.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“only when savers can put their money in reliable banks that it can be channelled from the idle to the industrious.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“bond markets have power because they’re the fundamental base for all markets. The cost of credit, the interest rate [on a benchmark bond], ultimately determines the value of stocks, homes, all asset classes.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“Its prime cause was the rise and fall of ‘securitized lending’, which allowed banks to originate loans but then repackage and sell them on. And that was only possible because the rise of banks was followed by the ascent of the second great pillar of the modern financial system: the bond market.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“As the banks took over the securities, the ratios between their capital and their assets lurched down towards their regulatory minima. Central banks in the United States and Europe sought to alleviate the pressure on the banks with interest rate cuts”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“Between 1929 and 1933, the public succeeded in increasing its cash holdings by 31 per cent; commercial bank reserves were scarcely altered (indeed, surviving banks built up excess reserves); but commercial bank deposits decreased by 37 per cent and loans by 47 per cent. The absolute numbers reveal the lethal dynamic of the ‘great contraction’. An increase of cash in public hands of $1.2 billion was achieved at the cost of a decline in bank deposits of $15.6 billion and a decline in bank loans of $19.6 billion, equivalent to 19 per cent of 1929 GDP.91”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“And from 1966, under Regulation Q, there was a ceiling of 5.5 per cent on their deposit rates, a quarter of a per cent more than banks were allowed to pay.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“Or, to reassure the bond market, does it cut expenditures in some other area, upsetting voters or vested interests? Or does it try to reduce the deficit by raising taxes?”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“Mortgages were short-term, usually for three to five years, and they were not amortized. In other words, people paid interest, but did not repay the sum they had borrowed (the principal) until the end of the loan’s term, so that they ended up facing a balloon-sized final payment. The average difference (spread) between mortgage rates and high-grade corporate bond yields was about two percentage points during the 1920s, compared with about half a per cent (50 basis points) in the past twenty years.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“Despite the South’s military setbacks, they retained their value for most of the war for the simple reason that the price of the underlying security, cotton, was rising as a consequence of increased wartime demand. Indeed, the price of the bonds actually doubled between December 1863 and September 1864, despite the Confederate defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, because the price of cotton was soaring.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“now Rothschild was providing Europe with a new social elite by raising up the system of government bonds to supreme power . . . [and] endowing money with the former privileges of land. To be sure, he has thereby created a new aristocracy, but this is based on the most unreliable of elements, on money . . . [which] is more fluid than water and less steady than the air . . .32”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“the shortage of cotton also drove up the price and hence the value of the South’s cotton-backed bonds, making them an irresistibly attractive investment for key members of the British political elite.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
“as inflation has fallen, so bonds have rallied in what has been one of the great bond bull markets of modern history. Even more remarkably, despite the spectacular Argentine default - not to mention Russia’s in 1998 - the spreads on emerging market bonds have trended steadily downwards, reaching lows in early 2007 that had not been seen since before the First World War, implying an almost unshakeable confidence in the economic future.”
― Niall Ferguson, quote from The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
Niall Ferguson
Born place: in Glasgow, Scotland, The United Kingdom
Born date April 18, 1964
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“O Lord our God, if during this day I have sinned, whether in word or deed or thought, forgive me all, for You are good and love mankind. Grant me peaceful and undisturbed sleep, and deliver me from all influence and temptation of the evil one. Raise me up again in proper time that I may glorify You; for You are blessed with Your Only-begotten”
― quote from The Orthodox Study Bible
“You're no better than Sharpclaw and Sparrowpelt. They look down their noses at us because we stay loyal to our housefolk as well as our Clan. I thought you were different, Leafstar, but I was wrong”
― Erin Hunter, quote from SkyClan's Destiny
“Well,” Leigh said, because there was nothing else. She looked back at the picture of herself and Pam in the blue dresses. “We did have it easier than she did. I’m sure we did. And I should thank her for that, I guess.”
Pam nodded. She looked calm, untroubled. Leigh, tapped her foot on the ottoman and glanced at her mother’s photographs. “But it felt like that was all she saw when she looked at us.” She leaned forward to get Pam’s attention. She wanted her sister to understand, to see things the way she had. “You know? I always felt like she never saw me, me as a individual. Do you know what I am saying? She gave us everything she ever wanted. But she never thought about what we wanted that it may be different. Or that we might need something that she didn’t. She never saw us separate from herself. She never saw us.” She paused, nodding in agreement with herself. That was it. She decided. She’d never put words to the feeling before, but that was it. That had been the whole trouble between them.
But when she looked back at Pam, her satisfaction vanished. Her sister’s mouth was pulled tight, her eyes wide. She looked away from Leigh, saying nothing, still the loyal confidante. But Leigh already knew. She knew what she couldn’t guess before, what Pam thought of the two of them on the porch swing, Kara talking, Pam listening. Leigh didn’t have to guess anymore. She could hear the words come out of her daughter’s mouth as clearly as they’d just come out of her own.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“You still awake?' asked the anesthetist.
'Nope,' I replied.”
― Eoin Colfer, quote from Half-Moon Investigations
“If he had driven to the south coast on a different afternoon, I thought. If he had driven there on one of those afternoons when I was there with Jock during the autumn and winter, instead of one of the days when I wasn’t there. And if we had walked toward each other and caught sight of each other, and I had thought, Oh look, there’s Johannes Alby, and he’d thought, Oh look, there’s Dorrit Weger with her little dog. And if we had stopped and chatted, and if I had invited him back to my house for a cup of coffee or a bowl of soup or some pasta. If it had started like that. If it had started then.”
― Ninni Holmqvist, quote from The Unit
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