"The Ascent of Money"

daz

daz

daz

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
24,081
Location
Bucks
Been watching this since it started on Channel 4 over the last few weeks and it's been an excellent series, charting the rise of money over the ages and how it's changed the society we live in.

Last night's episode was a particularly good one focusing on property and the rise of mortgages in the 20th century, and how property is nowhere near the safe investment that it's perceived to be by so many people, and a good explanation of why.

Definitely recommend you watch if you haven't on C4oD. :)
 
I haven't seen the show, but I want watch it now.

Question though; isn't property a 'safe' investment anyway? Even if the house market were to crash completely?

Simply because everyone would be in the same boat anyway. Plus houses (shelter) will always, always be in demand (especially as the population rises), therefore even if your house is worthless one day, it will definitely regain its value later on regardless?

I don't know what was said on the show though, so I could be missing whatever info.
 
I was a bit disappointed that he didn't seem to cover how we transitioned from a commodity backed system, to the current fiat system we have now. The first program did mention that banking is all about confidence, but he didn't talk about how we went from, for example, using gold coins first to then using paper receipts issued against gold coins held in a goldsmiths for convenience sake, then to a fractional reserve gold backed paper system as a result of over issuance of receipts by the "banks", and finally to abandonment of any backing for paper money whatsover and the massive overproduction of paper money we are seeing now.

Still a good series though, just more about the ascent of finance as opposed to the ascent of money
 
houses are always a "good investment" if you need somewhere to live, just not a particularly good speculative investment if you were hoping it meant you didn't need to save for a pension.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom