Free Nation Deep in Debt
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A01=James Macdonald
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Author_James Macdonald
Banknote
Bankruptcy
Bond (finance)
Capitalism
Category=KCZ
Category=NHB
Comparative advantage
Credit risk
Creditor
Currency
Debt
Debt consolidation
Debt crisis
Debt overhang
Debt relief
Debt service
Debt settlement
Default (finance)
Direct tax
Ducat
Economic efficiency
Economic liberalism
Economic miracle
Economic recovery
Economic surplus
Empire of Debt
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eq_history
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eq_non-fiction
Expense
Fiat money
Finance
Financial crisis
Financial independence
Financial soundness
Free trade
Funded Debt
Government debt
Great Debasement
Great Society
Gresham's law
Hard currency
High-yield debt
Income
Inflation
Interest
Interest rate
Investor
Liquid capital
Loan shark
Money market
Moneylender
Partly paid
Payment
Peace dividend
People's Budget
Poor relief
Progressive tax
Public finance
Recession
Refunding
Repayment
Revolutionary tax
Ship money
Spendthrift
Tax
Tax collector
The Economic Consequences of the Peace
The True Cost
Usury
War bond
Weak Currency
Wealth
Product details
- ISBN 9780691126326
- Weight: 907g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 22 May 2006
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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For the greater part of recorded history the most successful and powerful states were autocracies; yet now the world is increasingly dominated by democracies. In A Free Nation Deep in Debt, James Macdonald provides a novel answer for how and why this political transformation occurred. The pressures of war finance led ancient states to store up treasure; and treasure accumulation invariably favored autocratic states. But when the art of public borrowing was developed by the city-states of medieval Italy as a democratic alternative to the treasure chest, the balance of power tipped. From that point on, the pressures of war favored states with the greatest public creditworthiness; and the most creditworthy states were invariably those in which the people who provided the money also controlled the government. Democracy had found a secret weapon and the era of the citizen creditor was born. Macdonald unfolds this tale in a sweeping history that starts in biblical times, passes via medieval Italy to the wars and revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and ends with the great bond drives that financed the two world wars.
James Macdonald was an investment banker for many years. He lives in Oxford, England.
