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

by Niall Ferguson

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465023266
• ISBN13: 9780465023264
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Highly Recommended!

It would be a mistake to emphasize the word "cash" in this book's ambivalent title without giving equal weight to the word that follows, "nexus." A nexus is the bond between two disparate things and, indeed, this is a book about the intersection of power and money. Its thesis, to the frustration of economic determinists everywhere, is that while money matters, other things matter more, at least when it comes to the cultural chessboard of international politics. One might quibble that author Niall Ferguson underemphasizes the extent to which competition for economically vital scarce resources leads to war. The other caveat is that he refers to the U.S.'s reluctance to go to war with a pre-Iraq state of mind. Yet, the author is an accomplished historian who capably supports his arguments. He manages overall to portray economic history in all its rich nuance, detail and complexity. His premise that war, not economics or politics, is the great engine that has driven the evolution of the modern welfare state is as enlightening as it is chilling. We highly recommend this book to the lay reader with a developed interest in history, politics and, especially, economics. However, a warning is in order: Those who only read the headlines may find this just a little too deep.

Excellent Research Yields An Excellent Book

Reading this book has added a nuclear weapon to my swelling arsenal for the debates I keep having with my conspiracy-theory-loving friends. I find it not only well written, but extremely well documented. It has helped me search for further documentation in the everlasting campaign against Michael Moore types who are too lazy to search for fact based answers and rely on innuendo, ideology and oversimplified theories, which then are readjusted in complicated ways just to appear to fit new facts. These, inevitably, end with the statement: "That's what They want you to believe." In this book, you'll find documentary evidence that there are no secret societies ruling the world, but an invisible hand, by the way of the international financial markets, that rewards and punishes nations for their actions. And these markets only follow the will of the many, not the few; even when the many allow themselves to be taken advantage into waging futile wars for reasons that may be personal, like royalty fighting other royals, or more abstract, like Nazis vying for "breathing space". Money is an instrument of war, not the cause of it.

Excellent and Timely

First, this book deserves more publicity and more praise. It deserves to be included in the ongoing debates between Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" approach, Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" and finally Kennedy's "Imperial Overstretch" Hypothesis.I haven't read such a well argued, informative and in addition entertaining non-fiction book since "Guns, Germs and Steel". I was overjoyed when that book won the recognition it deserved. I hope this book does as well. In addition, this book is important because it hits on today's news. Read the section on Debt management, and then see how you feel about Bush's tax cuts, or defence policy. This is not to say the book is partisan, but the author is a financial historian, and will bring up new ways of thinking about current topics.If your are interested in financial history, the link between finances and politics, you will find this book fascinating.

Good Stuff Inside and Out

Call me superficial, but this book is as good as its author is handsome, which means it's great. What an incredibly good-looking, intelligent, articulate man. (Saw him speaking at a dinner meeting in New York City on C-SPAN.) Ferguson posits here a nearly heretical notion for many Americans to swallow -- that in times of plenty a rich nation ought to consider using its surplus to not only keep peace, but actively make peace around the world through pro-active and creative use of money and re-tooled military personnel. What a pleasure to hear that there are those like Ferguson who envision unselfish and cooperative ways to use tech-sector wealth -- that intellectuals vis-a-vis the cyber era are not all following Ayn Rand's unique brand of Darwinism - e.g., that only the fittest -- or richest --survive.

The number of pages is wrong.

This is not a book review. I just want to correct the number of pages. The number of pages in this book is 552, not 380 recorded above.