The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000

Does money make the world go round, as Cabaret's Master of Ceremonies sang to us? In The Cash Nexus, acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson offers a radical and surprising answer-No. Conventional wisdom has long claimed that economic change is the prime mover of political change, whether in the age of industry or the Internet. In our own time Paul Kennedy has claimed that economics provided the key to international power, while Francis Fukuyama and others have argued that capitalism doomed socialism and ensured the victory of democracy. Small wonder politicians are obsessed with the economy: the Clinton campaign motto-It's the economy stupid -sums up a central tenet of modern life. But is it the economy? Ferguson thinks it is high time we re-examined the link-the nexus, to use Thomas Carlyle's term-between economics and politics, in the aftermath not only of the failure of socialism but also of the apparent triumph of American-style capitalism. His central argument is that the conflicting impulses of sex, violence, and power are together more powerful than money. In particular, political events and institutions have often dominated economic development. A bold synthesis of political history and modern economic theory, Cash Nexus will transform the landscape of modern history and draw challenging and unsettling conclusions about the prospects of both capitalism and democracy.

Author: Niall Ferguson
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 02/21/2002
Pages: 576
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.56lbs
Size: 9.28h x 6.08w x 1.55d
ISBN: 9780465023264

About the Author
Niall Ferguson is one of the world's most renowned historians and author of numerous books, including The Square and the Tower, The Ascent of Money, and Civilization. He is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing.


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