Book description
Winner of the Spears Business Book of the Year Award
Longlisted for the Financial Times Goldman Sachs Business Book of
the Year Award
In today's financial climate, we are all, naturally, obsessed by
debt. In almost every aspect of our life we experience it - on our
credit cards, mortgages, bank loans and student loans. But where has
this debt come from? How does it work? What is any money really worth?
And what promises do we need to believe to keep the whole system afloat?
In this fascinating look at money through the ages - including our
own unstable future - award-winning financial journalist Philip Coggan
examines the flawed structure of the global finance systems as they
exist today, and asks, with deeper imbalances that the world is
currently facing, what's actually at stake.
Philip Coggan was a
Financial Times
journalist for over twenty years, including spells as a Lex columnist,
personal finance editor and economics correspondent, and is now the
Capital Markets Editor of the Economist. In 2009 he was awarded the
title of Senior Financial Journalist in the Harold Wincott awards and
was voted Best Communicator at the Business Journalist of the Year
Awards.
Paper Promises
is his fourth book.
