Poddnamn: Axess TV
publicerad: 2024-11-01 12:08
Global Axess 2024 – Edward Chancellor: Interest Rates: Mankind’s Greatest Invention
The earliest record of interest rates dates back 5,000 years. Interest exists because capital is scarce, man is mortal, and time is valuable. The appearance of interest has been described as the most important invention in history, because it allows people to transact across time. In ancient Mesopotamia, as in the modern world, interest rates served a range of vital functions: as an incentive to lending; as means of placing a valuation on real estate and other assets; directing the allocation of capital; and compensating lenders for risk. It is important that interest rates provide an accurate signal to economic agents. Yet, throughout history, this signal has nearly always been corrupted by government regulations. The appearance of fiat currencies has made matters worse. After the global financial crisis of 2008, central bankers pushed interest rates to zero and even negative levels. It is now time to reckon with the consequences of this rash monetary experiment.

Edward Chancellor is a financial historian, journalist and investment strategist. Chancellor read history at Trinity College, Cambridge, and later gained an MPhil in Enlightenment history from Oxford University. In the early 1990s he worked for the London merchant bank, Lazard Brothers. He was later an editor at Breakingviews. From 2008 to 2014, Edward was a senior member of the asset allocation team at GMO, the Boston-based investment firm. He is currently a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, MoneyWeek, the New York Review of Books, and Times Literary Supplement. In 2008, he received the George Polk Award for financial reporting for his article ‘Ponzi Nation’ in Institutional Investor magazine. Edward is the author of Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation (Farrar Straus/Macmillan, 1999), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Edward has also edited two investment books, Capital Account (Thomson Texere, 2004) and Capital Returns (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). His latest book, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest (Allen Lane, 2022) was longlisted for the Financial Times 2022 Business Book of the Year and awarded the 2023 Hayek Prize.

Justin Oliver Webb is a British journalist who has worked for the BBC since 1984. He is a former BBC North America Editor and the main co-presenter of BBC one’s Breakfast News programme. Since August 2009, he has co-presented the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, and also regularly writes for the Radio Times.
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