As the world continues to struggle to find its footing amid rising unemployment, constricted credit and crumbling banks and industries — raising questions about how the economic system collapsed — PBS presents Niall Ferguson’s ASCENT OF MONEY. This groundbreaking four-part series examines the creation of the economic system by taking viewers on a global trek through the history of money. (An abbreviated version of the documentary, which focused on the current economic crisis at the advent of the Obama administration, aired in January; it can be streamed in full on the Website.) The four-hour version delves deeper into how the complex system of global finance evolved over the centuries, how money has shaped the course of human affairs and how the mechanics of this economic system work to create seemingly unlimited wealth — or catastrophic loss.

ASCENT OF MONEY is based on Ferguson’s best-selling book The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, which predicted the current economic crisis and was released within weeks of the meltdown of sub-prime loans.

Said Ferguson, “In the midst of a major economic depression, it is often hard to appreciate the historical precedents and truly understand that while a situation may look dire, our system of finance, banking and trade has allowed for unprecedented progress. I’m hopeful the film will allow viewers to better understand the on-going evolution of our financial system and how our economy remains extraordinarily viable even as we are grappling with a crisis of historic proportions.”

For millions of people, the recession has generated a thirst for knowledge about how our global economic system really works, especially when so many financial experts seem to be equally baffled. In ASCENT OF MONEY, economist, author and historian Ferguson offers insight into these questions by taking viewers step-by-step through the milestones of the financial history that created this system, visiting the locations where key events took place and poring over actual ledgers and documents — such as the first publicly traded share of a company — that would change human history. Ferguson maintains that the history of money is indeed at the core of our human history, with economic strength determining political dominance, wars fought to create wealth and individual financial barons determining the fates of millions.

Among the places Ferguson visits are Bolivia, where Spain established vast gold and silver mines — still in operation — and enslaved the indigenous people to create so much currency for the Spanish crown that it eventually became worthless; Italy, where the Medici family transformed the sinful practice of usury into the banking system we know today and in the process became as powerful as monarchs; Paris, where Scotsman John Law created a Ponzi scheme tied to the Louisiana territory that brought France to its knees; London, where bonds trader Nathan Rothschild and his family nearly went bankrupt by helping to finance the British army’s war against Napoleon, then achieved enormous wealth through the buying and selling of war bonds; Scotland, where two ministers established the first life insurance fund, and New Orleans, where the shortcomings of their calculations would be demonstrated to tragic effect in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; and New York, where Ferguson interviews financial wizard George Soros about the concept he introduced of short selling derivatives based on a prediction that they will lose value.

Through this history, viewers learn economic fundamentals that inform the meanings of sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps and an understanding how the Chinese economy has risen to dominate the world.

Born in Glasgow in 1964, he was a Demy at Magdalen College and graduated with First Class Honours in 1985. After two years as a Hanseatic Scholar in Hamburg and Berlin, he took up a Research Fellowship at Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1989, subsequently moving to a Lectureship at Peterhouse. He returned to Oxford in 1992 to become Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Jesus College, a post he held until 2000, when he was appointed Professor of Political and Financial History at Oxford. Two years later he left for the United States to take up the Herzog Chair in Financial History at the Stern Business School, New York University, before moving to Harvard in 2004.

His first book, Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927 (Cambridge University Press, 1995), was short-listed for the History Today Book of the Year award, while the collection of essays he edited, Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (Macmillan, 1997), was a UK bestseller and subsequently published in the United States, Germany, Spain and elsewhere.

In 1998 he published to international critical acclaim The Pity of War: Explaining World War One (Basic Books) and The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild (Penguin). The latter won the Wadsworth Prize for Business History and was also short-listed for the Jewish Quarterly/Wingate Literary Award and the American National Jewish Book Award. In 2001 he published The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000 (Basic), following a year as Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England.

He is a regular contributor to television and radio on both sides of the Atlantic. In 2003 he wrote and presented a six-part history of the British Empire for Channel 4, the UK terrestrial broadcaster. The accompanying book, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (Basic), was a bestseller in both Britain and the United States. The sequel, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, was published in 2004 by Penguin. His latest book is The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, which was published to critical acclaim in September 2006. He is currently completing a biography of Siegmund Warburg and has recently begun researching the life of Henry Kissinger.

A prolific commentator on contemporary politics and economics, Niall Ferguson writes and reviews regularly for the British and American press. He is a contributing editor for the Financial Times. In 2004 Time magazine named him as one of the world’s hundred most influential people.

He and his wife Susan have three children. They divide their time between the United States and the United Kingdom.

RESOURCES ON FINANCE AND THE HISTORY OF MONEY

FRONTLINE: Secret History of the Credit Card

NOVA: Secrets of Making Money

THE HISTORY CHANNEL: The History of Money in the United States

EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS FROM PBS

Lesson Plans: Financial Education

What’s Up in Finance?

INTERVIEWS, SPEECHES AND ARTICLES OF NIALL FERGUSON

Niall Ferguson: America Needs to Cancel Its Debt (Vanity Fair, January 20, 2009)

Niall Ferguson, Mort Zuckerman and Danny Meyer interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times (January 15, 2009)

Watch Niall Ferguson on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” (January 13, 2009)

Interview on CNBC’s “Street Signs” with Erin Burnett (January 13, 2009)

Interview on WNYC (November 20 2008)

Interview about his book The Ascent of Money (from the Carnegie Council, November 20 2008)

Interview about his book The Ascent of Money (from “Night Talk” on Bloomberg, November 19 2008)

Interview about his book The Ascent of Money (from “Conversations with History” at the University of California at Berkeley, October 22 2008)

“Wall Street Lays Another Egg” by Niall Ferguson (Vanity Fair, December 2008)