The Price of Time

The Real Story of Interest

The Price of Time
Edward Chancellor
RRP:
NZ$ 65.00
Our Price:
NZ$ 52.00
Hardback
h240 x 162mm - 432pg
7 Jul 2022 UK
International import eta 7-19 days
9780241569160
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
A history of interest rates and their many unexpected ramifications from a leading financial historian and investment strategistCapitalism and interest are inseparable, yet over the centuries whenever interest rates have collapsed and money was too easy, financial markets have become unstable. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, interest rates have sunk lower than at any time in the five millennia since they were first recorded. In an unprecedented move, negative interest rates were introduced in Europe and Japan, causing trillions of dollars' worth of bonds to trade at negative yields. Monetary policymakers appear blithe to the unintended consequences of their actions. Yet given the essential function of interest in determining how capital is allocated and priced, and its role in regulating financial risk, it is not clear that capitalism can thrive or even survive under these conditions. With clarity and precision, Edward Chancellor traces the history of interest from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia, through debates about usury in Restoration Britain and John Law' s ill-fated Mississippi scheme to the global credit booms of the twentieth century. The Price of Time reveals how extremely low interest rates not only create asset price inflation but are also largely responsible for the weak economic growth, rising inequality, elevated debt levels, and pensions crises that have afflicted Western economies in recent years. At the same time, easy money in China has inflated an epic real estate bubble, accompanied by the greatest credit and investment boom in history. The global financial system is edging closer to yet another devastating crisis.
Is it possible to write a highly engaging history of the world going back to Hammurabi, unfolding along the way a bitingly comprehensive explanation for its problems today, all told through a single character? Apparently yes. Edward Chancellor has done it, an achievement all the more notable since his drama is built around a character so unheroic on its surface: his "price of time" is interest rates. This is a timely, vitally important and hugely readable book. -- Ruchir Sharma * Chairman, Rockefeller International and New York Times bestselling author * Edward Chancellor has produced not just a brilliant explainer of the value of money and time but a hugely engaging history of the greatest problem confronting markets today. The Price of Time is a must read - a copy should be on the desk of everyone who has anything to do with financial markets or wondered why things work as they do. -- Merryn Somerset Webb * Editor-in-Chief, MoneyWeek * Interest rates haven' t simply fallen - they were pushed. And by their pushing, the world' s central banks have constructed the hall of mirrors in which every investor has become, of necessity, a speculator. So argues Edward Chancellor in this brilliant chronicle of the most important prices in capitalism. You must read it. It is a masterpiece of history, analysis-and properly understated outrage. -- James Grant * editor of Grant' s Interest Rate Observer * I wish The Price of Time were the book that I had written. I am reminded of Keynes' letter to Hayek after reading The Road to Serfdom where he said "In my opinion it is a grand book. We all have the greatest reason to be thankful to you for saying so well what needs so much to be said. . . . . I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it, and not only in agreement but in a deeply moved agreement" -- William White * former Chief Economist, Bank for International Settlements * Well I' ll be darned! Chancellor has done the nearly impossible: he has made a potentially dreary topic - interest rates - into a witty, philosophical and highly entertaining story crammed with historical anecdotes starting with the Babylonians and ending yesterday. At the same time the obvious weight and breadth of his research leads us to his important conclusion: for Heaven' s Sake leave interest rates to market forces; manipulation by Central Banks leads to chain linked disasters, another of which may well be imminent. -- Jeremy Grantham, Founder and Chief Investment Strategist, GMO LLC Superb! A worthy successor to Devil Take the Hindmost. -- William Bernstein * author of The Delusion of Crowds * Praise for Devil Take the Hindmost * --- * An admirably researched and very well written account of speculative insanity from the earliest times to, let no one doubt, the present. -- J. K. Galbraith Entertaining, useful, admirable scholarship. . . Chancellor seems to have read everything. -- New York Times Book Review Praise for Crunch-Time for Credit? -- --- There was no single, dominant, astonishing voice in the wilderness in the debate on the credit crunch, but. . . Edward Chancellor, an economic historian, foresaw almost everything. -- Charles Moore * Daily Telegraph *
Edward Chancellor is the author of Devil Take the Hindmost- A History of Financial Speculation which has been translated into many languages and was a New York Times Book of the Year. After reading history at Cambridge and Oxford, he worked for Lazard Brothers and until 2014 he was a senior member of the asset allocation team at GMO. He is currently a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews and has contributed to the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, MoneyWeek and the New York Review of Books. In 2008, he received the George Polk Award for financial reporting for his article "Ponzi Nation" in Institutional Investor.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9780241569160
Published: 7 Jul 2022
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Allen Lane
Publisher: Penguin Books
Format: Hardback
Height: 240mm
Width: 162mm
Spine: 39mm
Weight: 686g
Pages: 432

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