Customer Reviews

Popes and Bankers: A Cultural History of Credit and Debt, from Aristotle to AIG

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

One of the things Mr. Cashill is known for is illuminating the true circumstances around events which others have spun to produce a desired outcome. Reading his retelling of these stories has the effect of upending much of what you thought you knew.
In this particular book he takes the time period from Aristotle to present day and successfully strings together the intriguing stories into a narrative that was a joy to read.
What I found particularly interesting were the historical developments related to anti-Semitism; beginning with the role of philosophers, theologians, and institutions trying to grapple with the issue of profit making from loans(rather than from producing goods) and their pronouncements regarding the morality of this activity, contrasted with those such as Marx who would find useful the negative associations related to the the success of Jews in European finance "huckstering" to support their agendas.
The book does a very good job of explaining the development of credit dependency and the complex financial products brought into being without making your eyes glaze over. In fact, it's quite fascinating.
It is not at all a dark view of history, but a web of human action covering a range of motivations from the desire to create a just and moral society to the expansion of wealth for all to the exploitation for personal gain or ideological purpose. And the effect is kind of heart wrenching. There are wonderful surprises throughout which bring a smile to your face, such as Institutes having been written by John Calvin at age 26.
Not to be missed.

The writing here is sharp and witty, with almost every paragraph ending in some sort of a zinger, often connecting ancient history to some current event. And the scope and depth of the cultural history included here is astonishing, from a synopsis of The Inferno and The Merchant of Venice to paraphrases of the latest financial best-sellers, with some Flannery O'Connor thrown in for good measure. The writer is obviously a talented and erudite man.

The first thing that puzzled me, however, is that this book is published by Thomas Nelson, mainly known as a Bible publisher based in Nashville. Huh, that's odd. And then the book begins with an anecdote about a woman who defaults on her over-priced mortgage, the punch line of which is that her problem is that she is a prodigal.

The history of debt and credit then is undertaken, and the point is that both Judaism and Catholicism, as well as much of secular ancient thought, considered money-lending to be a serious sin. The sin of usury was roundly condemned, and it meant not the charging of excessive interest, but the charging of interest at all. In its place, the rich were recommended to give generously to the poor, not to entrap them in pay day loans.

While this point comes across loud and clear throughout the historical section of the book (and while virtually no mention is made of any ancient moral precepts condemning the poor for trying to scrape by through borrowing money), the author strains to make the point that it is the fault of greedy borrowers, rather than greedy lenders, that is really the problem that tanked the economy.

His history of the US economy may be considered somewhat less than objective, since Murray Rothbard is his primary source. For those who don't check their footnotes, Rothbard is on the radical fringe of libertarianism and the free the market movement.

Further, towards the end of the book, the author turns his attention to proving that it was the government that forced poor little bank and finance companies to give out liar loans to prodigal poor people, and he puts particular emphasis on the evils of selling homes to single moms (whose very existence is a result, in his view, of a moral failure) and the concomitant evil of the government insisting that banks not discriminate on the basis of race in their mortgage lending. (He laughs off the idea that lenders would ever actually discriminate.)

So despite setting up the moral background that condemns usurious lenders, he comes down hardest against borrowers, whom he states are not victims of anything, but rather sinners.

The idea that Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns were the real victims, pushed into bankruptcy by excessive government regulation, is pretty hard to swallow, no matter how many biblical references and anecdotes from Dante you throw in (and curiously, those references and anecdotes actually point the finger at the lenders as the evil-doers, so the whole argument seems off-base.)

The author heaps particular scorn on events in California, with the tired but handy image of California as a particularly weird place where any sort of nonsense might be expected to happen. He laughably blames high real estate prices in places like Santa Monica on what he calls eco-prissiness. If it weren't for all those fussy laws about things like, oh I don't know, maybe earthquake safety? there would be more houses built in Santa Monica, thus driving down the prices so that virtuous 2-parent families could afford them. Never mind the fact that California actually over-built in inland cities like Stockton, which crashed bad. And he claims that the reason people couldn't read their loan documents is that there were so many government regulations that the stack of paperwork just got too high.

If you seriously believe that it was no-fault divorced laws in California, creating hordes of prodigal single moms who then buy houses they can't afford, in league with eco-sissies who make too many rules about where houses can be built, who just crashed our economy, then this book will confirm your biases.

If you suspect that the story might have more to do with a lack of government regulation, rather than an excess of it, and trade policies which created lower salaries in the US and cash excesses in China, you might want to get your history of credit markets elsewhere.

A very pleasant surprise - highly recommended. Light in tone, very broad in scope of subjects and disciplines touched on (truly multidisciplinary in approach). This entertaining and informative book presents a (subjective) approach to understanding the "Great Recession's" roots in credit and debt, economic history and interesting people. Author uses various books for each chapter, which he seems to summarize and bring out most salient information. Author does an excellent job of explaining and simplifying complex issues.

A solid overview of the history of credit and debt, for a quick study of major elements and trends, from the medieval period to today. Changes in the ideas of usury, loans, etc. which led us to the financial disaster we find ourselves in nationally, and many of us personally. Should be required reading for high schoolers and college students, when spending habits are forming and there is curiosity about how things got this way in our society.

Popes and Bankers is a fascinating exploration of the history of credit, interest and banking. It builds upon the irony that Jews and Christians, despite being the only peoples who were always, unequivocally against usury, nonetheless, used this peculiar practice toward the end of building the most vibrant economy the world has every seen.

It was, he argues, the very unease with which people regarded borrowing and loaning at interest that kept thrift in the forefronts of people's minds and kept the economy healthy and growing. The recent economic meltdown was due, in no small part, he argues, to people becoming all too willing to accept far too much debt upon themselves. Predatory lending as well as predatory borrowing have both played a role in causing the current economic collapse.

The author explores views on interest and credit going back to the Bible, the Talmud, the Church Fathers, the Greek and Roman philosophers, Dante, the medieval philosophers and economic thinkers of the enlightenment and current era as well.

Popes and Bankers opens up dozens of new vistas and provides the reader with countless new lenses through which to view economic phenomena, apart from the old saw of blaming Wall Street and lamenting the ill fortune of the little guy. The book also provides a manner in which to understand the role that religion has played in keeping the market healthy and how, with the abandonment of age old values, we have, in a way, been cut loose from our economic mooring.

This one is a must read for everyone who needs to balance his checkbook, set a budget, take out a loan, understand the world around him or the historical events that has shaped this world. A+

Reading this book took me forever - and while certainly full of interesting tidbits - I was frequently disappointed by the way the author contradicted himself in the process of trying to point out the contradictions, hypocrisies, and sheer bone-headed-ness of the financial movers and shakers in history.

This is more a collection of essays or magazine articles, not a cohesive history. The author claims to be objective, but from the snarky tone of the first chapter onward it is painfully obvious he has his own ax to grind. It is biased enough to have certain groups frothing at the mouth, that is, if they could understand all his ten-dollar words. Don't get me started on his `funny' little remarks - Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.) this is not.

This is an interesting and fast paced romp through the world of economics. You could never use this book as reference should you be writing a report on the history of money however. It does not start as much but definitely leans heavily towards a biased prospective of non-governmental regulation and conservative values. I can't imagine the author is anything but a libertarian. There is nothing wrong with that (depending on whom you ask anyway) but it definitely leans very heavily in that direction and if you were looking for an impartial view on the current mess, you won't find it here. It makes some very good arguments though.
The book was a good read and I couldn't put it down. It's certainly motivated me to do some of my own historical research into past methods of banking and lending and given me an interesting view and starting point.
If you are looking for an in-depth look into financial histories, this is not it. It is merely highlights of economics as they were formed and affected the western world.

I must say that I was not very satisfied with this book. On a positive note, Caashill is a good - if quite opinionated - writer and he tells what could have been dry story with some excitement. He is, as others have pointed out, obviously very researched in the area of financial history. From Aristotle's strange arguments against usury and Jesus's non-existent ones to the rise of the Rothchilds and the invention of the installment plan of payment, Cashill does write some interesting chapters.

But that is where the first problem comes: instead of a chronologically flowing history (where one chapter leads well into the next), these seemed more like scattered chapters, each examining a single episode in the history of usury but not connecting it to the previous or next. While reading Popes & Bankers, I felt like it would have been better as a collection of short theme-based magazine pieces.

The second problem, as others have noted, is that Cashill is quite opinionated (even though he never really argues a main point, he tells you his take on every event in the book). This would be fine were it disclosed that this would be an editorializing history, but it is marketed as a history, and it is simply too "opiniony" to be that.

So all in all, the book certainly wasn't a horrible one but was a bit worse than the average read. Maybe if it were marketed as a collection of essays rather than a history, I'd have felt like I got a bit more of what this book, it turns out, was.

Jack Cahsill's book Popes and Bankers is a great read for anyone economically minded. It covers the history of banking, credit, debt, bubbles, scams, and schemes from their very beginnings to the present day. The book covers so much, in fact, that at times it can become a bit confusing as to who is who. It is especially easy to get mixed up since so many of the prominent players in the financial world are Jewish or Italian.

Still, despite its frantic pace, Popes and Bankers is easy to follow and none of the terms had me consulting my financial advisor for deciphering. Mr. Cashill attempts to inject some humor into his writing, but mostly it's dry and educational. Regardless, it was fun to discover where Ponzi schemes started, why pawn shops have three balls as their logo, what caused the Tulip bubble, what was going on behind the scenes during the subprime crisis, and much more.

What I especially liked about Mr. Cashill's book is that he praises and/or blames no one race, political party, religion, or person for anything, but rather dishes out responsibility to all those involved, unlike the stories you might have heard from the popular media. Moreover, he presents not only the monetary issues, but also how morality and ethics affected things.

All in all...teaches how the modern financial world was shaped, along with all the bumps and bubbles along the way.

Having just gone through an economic crisis that we will continue to feel the effects of for a long time coming, some may wonder just how the credit market works. If you are one of those, this is the book for you. It is a well-written and jocular history of credit, beginning with Aristotle and continuing to the present. Cashill traces the beginnings of credit, differentiates it from usury, and notes how credit, once despised in the Middle Ages, came to be accepted as an integral part of the Capitalist system that arose in the Renaissance. He also traces the history of bubbles (our recent crash most likely was due to a housing bubble) from the tulip bubble in Holland to the English South Seas bubble and beyond. The crashes, panics and depressions that have plagued America almost since its inception are also examined and explained in easy to understand language, avoiding the technical terms that force non-specialists to shut their eyes. Overall, highly recommended for anyone who wants to learn the basics of the credit system.