The Ascent of Hooey (Weekend Book Review: Niall Ferguson's "The Ascent Of Money")

``The conflation of the concepts of money and credit, far from being a harmless academic error, is the very fallacy that, we submit, underlies the great financial crises in history. It is not the end point of an historical evolution in theory and practice, but a recurrent intellectual virus that regularly appears in support of ill-starred experiments in fiat money, every single one of which, as a matter of irrefutable historical fact, has ended in financial disaster. The Ascent of Money not only misses the crucial point, but purports to fashion a theory out of that very fallacy.''