This is without a doubt the best documentary ever made. Everyone should watch it. It’s too bad that school systems in the USA don’t teach their students the truth about our history, and the history of the world. It’s almost as if someone wanted to keep all of this secret. Thank you, PBS, for awakening some of us.

I agree! Thanks a lot:D. I love your article, it really lent me a hand.

This is a fascinating take on money in the MODERN world, rather than a scholarly look at its history. Metals were money for Western civilization, because they were important building blocks of life. Gold, silver, and bronze had important medicinal, industrial AS WELL AS aesthetic properties. The Inca did not encounter enemies against whom bronze weapons would have been useful, for example. They did not discover how useful bronze fittings could be to hold things together. They had not discovered the antiseptic properties of silver. HOWEVER, these metals were relatively light, hard, and universally useful in Eurasian history since the first to second millennia BCE.

Ferguson’s sweep of history tends to overlook facts such as these and lean on explaining current crises in terms of modern developments. It still is an interesting look at modern economics, if you know that is what you are viewing. Unfortunately, its pastiche of late Medieval finance is riddled with problems and any statements before the Renaissance are unreliable. Basically, it becomes reliable from about episode 2, where his scholarly expertise lies.

In Episode 1, Mr. Ferguson’s statement that Jews were placed into ghettos in Europe because they were money lenders is completely historically inaccurate and conceivably Antisemitic. Jews were located in ghettos primarily because they were perceived as “different” and an ideological threat (on religious grounds) to the church power structure in Europe, which was the dominant political force in Europe from the 5th century to the 18th century (see Wikipedia’s “Time-line of Antisemitism” for more information). Furthermore, his frequent reference to Shylock (above and beyond what was necessary to make his point), and the use of that character as symbolic of the Jewish money lenders of Europe, was offensive and did nothing to clarify the topic of discussion aside from providing a well-known stereotype for the audience to focus upon. He also mentioned that Jews could not lend to other Jews, while at the same time avoiding a detailed discussion (which would have provided more appropriate historical contextualization) about how Jews were prevented from engaging in most other pursuits that could lead to financial gain due to formal and informal Antisemitic policies in Europe. I cannot say whether Mr. Ferguson is an outright Antisemite, but these aforementioned issues makes it appear that way.

Excellent episode with many revelations. More like this please. America needs this sort of education even if it’s sort of dumbed down but better than other programs.

Would be Canadian viewers should either look for another site to view this program or download a program that will give them a US IP address allowing them to watch this and alot of other websites that they cannot access from canada.

To clarify, it’s not that PBS wants to block the program it’s the CRTC rights holder that has exclusive rights to broadcast programs in Canada…even if they don’t use the rights .

I think it’s funny that someone said that money must be free of debasement, and use silver and gold as a means of ending that. Niall pointed out that digging more of it out of the ground debased the value of silver that it ended Spain’s empire. Using one material resource to define the value of all other resources doesn’t make sense in my opinion.

I think that this is an excellent documentary. Very educational particulalry for the man in the street. No one else has bothered to educate the general public as to where the worlds wealth has vanished and how it all came about.

I am amazed by someof the remarks that are being sent through. Who cares if it was Bush or Clinton who pushed for deregulation, the fact remains that it happended, it could have been stopped by Bush, as President.Who cares if the name Shylock is menartioned more than once. This is about the financial crisis, the History of global economics, and not about indivudual egos,political opinions, and bias towards religious or ethnic groups.

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Great to see you guys too. I learned Tommy is a man of few words…even if he is the “Most interesting man in the world”…lmao

Some great points here, will be looking forward to your future updates.

Thanks for this! I’ve been searching all over the web for the data.

HI Scott good post , for my Google Adsense don’t go so wheel but I recommend it if you have time and money