title: The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
author:  Niall Ferguson 
description: "Before regulators throw block trades, bond swaps, bridge financing, butterfly spreads and Black-Scholes out with the bathwater, they should find time to read Niall Ferguson's <i>The Ascent of Money</i>." --<i>The Wall Street Journal</i><br><br> "[An] excellent, just in time guide to the history of finance and financial crisis." --<i>The Washington Post</i><br><br> "Shrewdly anticipates many aspects of the current financial crisis, which has toppled banks, precipitated gigantic government bailouts and upended global markets." --Michiko Kakutani, <i>The New York Times<br><br></i>"Fascinating." --Fareed Zakaria, <i>Newsweek<br><br></i>"Good old-fashioned narrative history, complete with heroes and villains, visionaries and scoundrels." --James Pressley, <i>Bloomberg</i>
zlib_text: ~-o (j ~ 
  THE SOCIALISATION 
  OF BANKING 
  BY 
  OSCAR SACHSE 
  MACMILLAN AND CO .• LIMITED 
  ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
  1933 
  
  FOREWORD 
  By THEHo~. Sm STAFFORD CRIPPS, K.C., M.P. 
  WITHIN the last few years the striking incongruity 'of 
  the lavish production of every kind of necessity and 
  luxury, accompanied by a more widespread state of 
  unemployment than has ever been known, has more 
  and more drawn the attention of the world to the 
  failure of the meChanism of exchange and distribu-
  tion. 
  Many people who .formerly looked upon 
  •• monetary policy" and •• finance" as a subject-
  matter of such complexity that it had to be left ex-
  clusively to the experts are now anxious to find out 
  for themselves why it is that with low prices and 
  abundant supplies over thirty million persons who 
  are anxious to work cannot be given the opportunity. 
  but must be condemned to rely upon charity or a 
  State dole to keep themselves and their families from 
  starvation. 
  The experts, who were popularly supp