War On Wealth The Fact And Fiction In British Finance Since 1800

This book addresses the divide that exists between the reality of finance and the image it projects. A functioning financial system is an essential feature of a modern economy, providing it with money, credit, capital, and investments. Conversely, those who provide this essential service are neither respected nor trusted. The causes and consequences of this divide is explored using the British experience from 1800 to the present, drawing upon a mixture of factual evidence and contemporary fiction. Nothing of this scale has been attempted before and this is the product of 50 years of research.

This book addresses the divide that exists between the reality of finance and the image it projects. A functioning financial system is an essential feature of a modern economy, providing it with money, credit, capital, and investments. Conversely, those who provide this essential service are neither respected nor trusted. The causes and consequences of this divide is explored using the British experience from 1800 to the present, drawing upon a mixture of factual evidence and contemporary fiction. Nothing of this scale has been attempted before and this is the product of 50 years of research.

"This book addresses the divide that exists between the reality of finance and the image it projects. A functioning financial system is an essential feature of a modern economy, providing it with money, credit, capital, and investments. Conversely, those who provide this essential service are neither respected nor trusted. The causes and consequences of this divide is explored using the British experience from 1800 to the present, drawing upon a mixture of factual evidence and contemporary fiction. Nothing of this scale has been attempted before and this is the product of 50 years of research"--

Financial fraud is a serious and seemingly intractable problem. Financial scandals regularly punctuate newspaper headlines and regulators and auditors appear bereft of effective responses. But has this always been the case?This book quantifies financial crime in the UK using three centuries of data. It demonstrates how financial fraud and scandal vary according to systematic economic and institutional arrangements. In doing so, it retells the history of British capitalism, from the mercantilism of the eighteenth century to the financial capitalism of the twenty-first century, illustrating the often negative consequences of economic ideology, policy and structure. It identifies periods when fraud has been less problematic and contrasts these with times when it has surged. The variation of outcomes reflects the balance of power between the state, industrial and financial sectors, the provision of credit through risky lending, and the effectiveness of audits. 'Rogue traders' and other flawed individuals are frequently the focus of blame narratives constructed with the intention of deflecting comprehensive systematic reforms.

This monograph presents a survey of the crucial link between state (national) power and finance from the ancient era through the present day. Cicero once said that the true sinew of war was "endless streams of money." His observation remains as accurate today as it was when Rome first began constructing its Empire.Unfortunately, too many historical works leave this crucial underpinning link out of their narratives. Even those that do economic and financial concerns typically miss the fact that the size of a state's economy often has little to do with its capacity to wield influence on the global stage. Much more crucial in this regard is the possession of an administrative system capable of efficiently mobilizing a state's resources. It was such an administrative apparatus that allowed Britain to punch far above its weight in the international arena for centuries. As a survey, this work is far from comprehensive, but the author hopes it will provide a stepping stone for a much-needed in-depth examination of the topic.

Money, in whatever form you care to imagine it- silver, gold, paper, or Bitcoin-remains as it always has been, the basic underpinning of national power, as well as the crucial determinant of military success. Throughout history, power has not so much flowed out of the barrel of a gun, as Mao famously claimed, as it has derived from a nation's ability to amass sufficient funds to prosecute a conflict. One could be forgiven for not taking note of this fact in most historical narratives. This is a result of historians, despite 3,000 years of experience to draw on, still choosing to ignore the profound affect finance has on warfare. To some degree, this is understandable; after all, barely more than a generation has passed since battle and campaign narratives began taking note of the effects of logistics. If military historians find logistics boring, they find economics and finance positively "coma-inducing." In the ancient world, Greece, under Alexander, destroyed the mighty Persian Empire, partly as a result of Alexander's genius, partly because he commanded a superior military instrument, but mostly because Persia hoarded its silver and gold rather than deploying it for war. In another instance, Sparta beat Athens in the Peloponnesian War, not as a result of Athens' Syracusan disaster, but because it eventually managed to cut off Athens from its silver mines at Laurium. Likewise, Hannibal and Carthage did not lose the Second Punic War in Italy, or at Zama. Rather, the decision in that great contest was irrevocably made when Rome conquered Spain and took over her silver mines. In a large part, it was these same silver mines that financed Rome's later conquest of the Mediterranean, which drew to an end at the same time the Spanish silver mines were exhausted. The same basic tale holds true throughout the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, and into the Pre-modern Era. But there is one vital twist. While having a large economic base is a vital element of national power, it is far from the most crucial. In fact, the size of an economy is not nearly as important as the ability to mobilize an economy in support of national interests. It was this factor that allowed England to punch far above its economic and population weight for centuries. England, though possessing a population and economic base a mere fraction the size of Frances' still, from the end of the Viking scourge through the Victorian era, employed a superior British administrative system to constantly humiliate its potentially far stronger neighbor. England's early advantage grew further with the advent of the Bank of England, which was based on earlier Dutch models of public finance. With the Bank behind it, the British government demonstrated how, for the first time, a state could easily convert shortterm debt into long-term debt, or in Britain's case, perpetual debt. As states now only had to pay the interest on the debt, rather than the entire principle, national debts could be turned into intergenerational affairs. In other words, wars could be fought in the present and paid for by the children and grandchildren of the participants. In fact, in Britain's case, the country was still paying interest on debts incurred to defeat Napoleon into the current decade. Every major state, with varying degrees of success, was soon emulating the British model. As such, huge amounts of capital were now available to fund huge increases in national armies, as well as bear the costs of arming their armies with the massive volumes of war materiel spewing forth from the factories of the Industrial Revolution. By the middle of the 20th century, the revolution in finance had progressed to the point where the United States was capable of financing not only its own global war effort, but also had sufficient financial resource left over to bear the brunt of the cost for its allies.