Paper Promises

Paper Promises

Money, Debt and the New World Order

Summary

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.

Reviews

  • Bold and confident ... Coggan covers the terrain with characteristic calmness and objectivity, avoids over-simplification, and laces his arguments with his trademark erudition ... The alphabet soup of acronyms, from SIVs to CDO Squareds, is blissfully lacking ... Finally, the book is free from the shrieking ideology that afflicts virtually all contemporary debates over money. Indeed, it offers a clear explanation of the fresh ideological divisions that have arisen over how to deal with the crisis ... the book should be taken very seriously
    Financial Times

About the author

Philip Coggan

Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more