Put not your trust in bankers

When I got to the end of this book, I felt a little bit sorry for Niall Ferguson. He's an interesting historian, a good writer, and a charming presence on the TV. But he's just written a book about money. And it's called The Ascent of Money. Ferguson finished the book earlier this year. But he must have started it a couple of years ago, when things looked much more rosy.

Ferguson, it seems, is - or was, at least - a fan of money, and the way the economy works. But it's as if he had written a fan's book about Manchester United, to be published on the eve of the Champions League final, only to discover that the whole team had been arrested for brawling the night before the match, and the board had been embezzling money, and the manager had bribed the referee. Right now, would

you want to have written a book called The Ascent of Money?

Still, to be fair to Ferguson, he faces up to this problem in his final chapter - written earlier this year, when things were beginning to look dodgy, but before the actual meltdown. Anyway, what he says is: "In writing this book, I have frequently been asked if I have given it the wrong title. The Ascent of Money may seem to sound an incongruously optimistic note." Perhaps, as he says, he should have called it 'The Descent of Finance'.

He didn't. That, I think, because this book is basically pro-finance. Ferguson explains the history of money - tokens, precious metals, coins, promissory notes, loans, bonds, the stock market, insurance, derivatives… all the way to sub-prime mortgages.

It's a fascinating history, and Ferguson is a good historian. He links things you'd never think of - for instance, he makes a brilliant case for the notion that the American Civil War was lost because of the mishandling of the cotton market in 1862. And his analysis