In the aftermath of recent financial crises it's easy to see finance as a wrecking ball:
something that destroys fortunes and jobs and undermines governments and banks. In Money
Changes Everything leading financial historian William Goetzmann argues the exact opposite -
that the development of finance has made the growth of civilizations possible. Goetzmann
explains that finance is a time machine a technology that allows us to move value forward and
backward through time and that this innovation has changed the very way we think about and
plan for the future. He shows how finance was present at key moments in history: driving the
invention of writing in ancient Mesopotamia spurring the classical civilizations of Greece and
Rome to become great empires determining the rise and fall of dynasties in imperial China and
underwriting the trade expeditions that led Europeans to the New World. He also demonstrates
how the apparatus we associate with a modern economy - stock markets lines of credit complex
financial products and international trade - were repeatedly developed forgotten and
reinvented over the course of human history.
