History of Money

History of Money
Author: Glyn Davies
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 1069
Release: 2010-09-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1783162767

An account of the central importance of money in the ordinary business of the life of different people throughout the ages from ancient times to the present day. It includes the Barings crisis and the report by the Bank of England on Barings Bank; information on the state of Japanese banking; and, the changes in the financial scene in the US.

Beggar Thy Neighbor

Beggar Thy Neighbor
Author: Charles R. Geisst
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2013-04-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0812207505

The practice of charging interest on loans has been controversial since it was first mentioned in early recorded history. Lending is a powerful economic tool, vital to the development of society but it can also lead to disaster if left unregulated. Prohibitions against excessive interest, or usury, have been found in almost all societies since antiquity. Whether loans were made in kind or in cash, creditors often were accused of beggar-thy-neighbor exploitation when their lending terms put borrowers at risk of ruin. While the concept of usury reflects transcendent notions of fairness, its definition has varied over time and place: Roman law distinguished between simple and compound interest, the medieval church banned interest altogether, and even Adam Smith favored a ceiling on interest. But in spite of these limits, the advantages and temptations of lending prompted financial innovations from margin investing and adjustable-rate mortgages to credit cards and microlending. In Beggar Thy Neighbor, financial historian Charles R. Geisst tracks the changing perceptions of usury and debt from the time of Cicero to the most recent financial crises. This comprehensive economic history looks at humanity's attempts to curb the abuse of debt while reaping the benefits of credit. Beggar Thy Neighbor examines the major debt revolutions of the past, demonstrating that extensive leverage and debt were behind most financial market crashes from the Renaissance to the present day. Geisst argues that usury prohibitions, as part of the natural law tradition in Western and Islamic societies, continue to play a key role in banking regulation despite modern advances in finance. From the Roman Empire to the recent Dodd-Frank financial reforms, usury ceilings still occupy a central place in notions of free markets and economic justice.

The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion

The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion
Author: Rachel M. McCleary
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 415
Release: 2011-01-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199781281

This is a one-of-kind volume bringing together leading scholars in the economics of religion for the first time. The treatment of topics is interdisciplinary, comparative, as well as global in nature. Scholars apply the economics of religion approach to contemporary issues such as immigrants in the United States and ask historical questions such as why did Judaism as a religion promote investment in education? The economics of religion applies economic concepts (for example, supply and demand) and models of the market to the study of religion. Advocates of the economics of religion approach look at ways in which the religion market influences individual choices as well as institutional development. For example, economists would argue that when a large denomination declines, the religion is not supplying the right kind of religious good that appeals to the faithful. Like firms, religions compete and supply goods. The economics of religion approach using rational choice theory, assumes that all human beings, regardless of their cultural context, their socio-economic situation, act rationally to further his/her ends. The wide-ranging topics show the depth and breadth of the approach to the study of religion.

London's Triumph

London's Triumph
Author: Stephen Alford
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2017-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1620408236

The dramatic story of the dazzling growth of London in the sixteenth century. For most, England in the sixteenth century was the era of the Tudors, from Henry VII and VIII to Elizabeth I. But as their dramas played out at court, England was being transformed economically by the astonishing discoveries of the New World and of direct sea routes to Asia. At the start of the century, England was hardly involved in the wider world and London remained a gloomy, introverted medieval city. But as the century progressed something extraordinary happened, which placed London at the center of the world stage forever. Stephen Alford's evocative, original new book uses the same skills that made his widely-praised The Watchers so successful, bringing to life the network of merchants, visionaries, crooks, and sailors who changed London and England forever. In a sudden explosion of energy, English ships were suddenly found all over the world--trading with Russia and the Levant, exploring Virginia and the Arctic, and fanning out across the Indian Ocean. The people who made this possible--the families, the guild members, the money-men who were willing to risk huge sums and sometimes their own lives in pursuit of the rare, exotic, and desirable--are as interesting as any of those at court. Their ambitions fueled a new view of the world--initiating a long era of trade and empire, the consequences of which still resonate today.

Credit and Creed

Credit and Creed
Author: Andreas Rahmatian
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2019-10-28
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0429594844

Money is a legal institution with principal economic and sociological consequences. Money is a debt, because that is how it is conceptualised and comes into existence: as circulating credit – if viewed from the creditor’s perspective – or, from the debtor’s viewpoint, as debt. This book presents a legal theory of money, based on the concept of dematerialised property. It describes the money creation or money supply process for cash and for bank money, and looks at modern forms of money, such as cryptocurrencies. It also shows why mainstream economics presupposes, but avoids an analysis of, money by effectively eliminating money from the microeconomic market model and declaring it as merely a neutral medium of exchange and unit of account. The book explains that money rather brings about and influences substantially the exchange or transaction it is supposed to facilitate only as a neutral medium. As the most liquid of all assets, money enables financialisation, monetisation and commodification in the economy. The central role of the banks in the money creation process and in the economy, and their strengthened position after the bank rescue measures in the wake of the financial crisis 2008-9 are also discussed. Providing a rigorous analysis of the most salient legal issues regarding money, this book will appeal to legal theorists, economists and anyone working in commercial or banking law.

The Oxford Handbook of Legal History

The Oxford Handbook of Legal History
Author: Markus D. Dubber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1254
Release: 2018-07-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0192513141

Some of the most exciting and innovative legal scholarship has been driven by historical curiosity. Legal history today comes in a fascinating array of shapes and sizes, from microhistory to global intellectual history. Legal history has expanded beyond traditional parochial boundaries to become increasingly international and comparative in scope and orientation. Drawing on scholarship from around the world, and representing a variety of methodological approaches, areas of expertise, and research agendas, this timely compendium takes stock of legal history and methodology and reflects on the various modes of the historical analysis of law, past, present, and future. Part I explores the relationship between legal history and other disciplinary perspectives including economic, philosophical, comparative, literary, and rhetorical analysis of law. Part II considers various approaches to legal history, including legal history as doctrinal, intellectual, or social history. Part III focuses on the interrelation between legal history and jurisprudence by investigating the role and conception of historical inquiry in various models, schools, and movements of legal thought. Part IV traces the place and pursuit of historical analysis in various legal systems and traditions across time, cultures, and space. Finally, Part V narrows the Handbooks focus to explore several examples of legal history in action, including its use in various legal doctrinal contexts.

Taming the Fringe

Taming the Fringe
Author: Craig McMahon
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2021-04-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 303070615X

Taming the Fringe analyses the regulation and evolution of two credit products that were, and remain, vital to the working poor. Policymakers have struggled with pawnbroking and moneylending because they raise broader issues pertaining to poverty, capitalism and financial regulation. The values of easily accessible credit and financial independence compete with society’s desire to protect people from predatory loans. Policymakers have pondered whether regulation can lower costs without reducing access for those most in need of small cash loans. Can government policy protect borrowers while also providing sufficient profit for lenders? The many attempts at doing so reveal the difficulty of safeguarding the needs of people who have experienced financial trouble before seeking a loan. Taming the Fringe is the first extended study of the payday lending and pawnbroking markets in Britain, and the only one to examine over 160 years of financial results and market data. This work explains why small-value lenders have generated such passionate debate, even being described as the devil incarnate. It adds to our knowledge of fringe banking and the evolving role of financial regulation to protect the working poor. Since 1870, pawnbrokers and moneylenders have actively shaped regulation – a viewpoint the existing literature does not address adequately. This work contributes to the scholarly and policy dialogue on financial inclusion, working-class poverty and the development and legitimacy of fringe lending. This book analyses the motivation, content and outcome of critical regulatory episodes that have shaped fringe banking. While historians have written volumes about consumer credit, few have analysed why elite policymakers have sought to protect the working poor from some credit markets. This work demonstrates that, across time, conflicting views on poverty and liberal economic theory have, to varying degrees, influenced how the government has protected the working poor, and will be of interest to financial and economic historians.

Loan Sharks

Loan Sharks
Author: Charles R. Geisst
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2017-04-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0815729014

Predatory lending: A problem rooted in the past that continues today. Looking for an investment return that could exceed 500 percent annually; maybe even twice that much? Private, unregulated lending to high-risk borrowers is the answer, or at least it was in the United States for much of the period from the Civil War to the onset of the early decades of the twentieth century. Newspapers called the practice “loan sharking” because lenders employed the same ruthlessness as the great predators in the ocean. Slowly state and federal governments adopted laws and regulations curtailing the practice, but organized crime continued to operate much of the business. In the end, lending to high-margin investors contributed directly to the Wall Street crash of 1929. Loan Sharks is the first history of predatory lending in the United States. It traces the origins of modern consumer lending to such older practices as salary buying and hidden interest charges. Yet, as Geisst shows, no-holds barred loan sharking is not a thing of the past. Many current lending practices employed today by credit card companies, payday lenders, and providers of consumer loans would have been easily recognizable at the end of the nineteenth century. Geisst demonstrates the still prevalent custom of lenders charging high interest rates, especially to risky borrowers, despite attempts to control the practice by individual states. Usury and loan sharking have not disappeared a century and a half after the predatory practices first raised public concern.

The Ascent of Money

The Ascent of Money
Author: Niall Ferguson
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2008-11-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1440654026

The 10th anniversary edition, with new chapters on the crash, Chimerica, and cryptocurrency "[An] excellent, just in time guide to the history of finance and financial crisis." —The Washington Post "Fascinating." —Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek In this updated edition, Niall Ferguson brings his classic financial history of the world up to the present day, tackling the populist backlash that followed the 2008 crisis, the descent of "Chimerica" into a trade war, and the advent of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, with his signature clarity and expert lens. The Ascent of Money reveals finance as the backbone of history, casting a new light on familiar events: the Renaissance enabled by Italian foreign exchange dealers, the French Revolution traced back to a stock market bubble, the 2008 crisis traced from America's bankruptcy capital, Memphis, to China's boomtown, Chongqing. We may resent the plutocrats of Wall Street but, as Ferguson argues, the evolution of finance has rivaled the importance of any technological innovation in the rise of civilization. Indeed, to study the ascent and descent of money is to study the rise and fall of Western power itself.