The Power of Gold The History of an Obsession

by Bernstein, Peter L.

• ISBN13: 9780471252108
• ISBN10: 0471252107
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-09-13
• Publisher: Wiley

Summary

In this exciting new book, Peter L. Bernstein, who chronicled the evolution of risk in his recent bestseller, Against the Gods, tells the story of history's most coveted, celebrated, and inglorious asset: gold. From the ancient fascinations of Moses and Midas through the modern convulsions caused by the gold standard and its aftermath, gold has led many of its most eager and proud possessors to a bad end. Gold had them, rather than the other way around. And while the same cycle of obsession and desperation may reverberate in today's fast-moving, electronically-driven stock markets, the role of gold in shaping human history is the striking feature of this tumultuous tale. Such is the power of gold.This fascinating account begins with the magical, religious, and artistic qualities of gold and progresses to the invention of coinage, the transformation of gold into money, and the gold standard. The more important gold becomes as money, the more loudly it speaks of power--even more loudly than when it served as an entry to Heaven or a symbol of omnipotence. Ultimately, the book confronts the future of gold in a world where it appears to have been relegated to the periphery of global finance.From the Bible to the Gold Rush era to modern day Fort Knox and beyond, unforgettable characters stride through these pages. Contemplate gold from the diverse perspectives of monarchs and moneyers, potentates and politicians, men of legendary wealth and others of more plebeian beginnings; from Asia Minor's King Croesus to Rome's noted speculator Crassus, to Byzantine emperors and humble miners, Venice's Marco Polo and Spain's Francisco Pizarro, to Charlemagne and Charles de Gaulle, Richard I and Richard Nixon, Isaac Newton and Winston Churchill, Britain's economists David Ricardo and John Maynard Keynes, and Christopher Columbus and the Forty-Niners. Perhaps most remarkable are the frantic speculators who pushed gold to $850.00 an ounce in 1980 just as their counterparts twenty years later drove Internet stocks to exorbitant heights.Whether it is Egyptian pharaohs with depraved tastes, the luxury-mad survivors of the Black Death, the Chinese inventor of paper money, the pirates on the Spanish Main, or the hardnosed believers in the international gold standard like the United States' President Herbert Hoover, gold has been the supreme possession. It has been an icon for greed and an emblem of rectitude, as well as a vehicle for vanity and a badge of power that has shaped the destiny of humanity through the ages. As Bernstein muses, "The joke is that nothing is as useless and useful all at the same time."Far more than a tale of romantic myths, daring explorations, and the history of money and power struggles, The Power of Gold suggests that the true significance of this infamous element may lie in the timeless passions it continues to evoke, and what this reveals about ourselves.

Author Biography

PETER L. BERNSTEIN combines the zest of a historian with the meticulous analytical powers of an economist. He is the author of seven books in economics and finance, including Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk and Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street. He is also President of Peter L. Bernstein, Inc., an economic consultancy to institutional investors, which he founded in 1973 after many years of managing billions of dollars in individual and institutional portfolios. He has lectured widely throughout the U.S. and abroad and has received the highest honors from his peers in the investment profession.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Supreme Possession	1	(8)
A METAL FOR ALL SEASONS
Get Gold at All Hazards	9	(9)
Midas's Wish and the Creatures of Pure Chance	18	(20)
Darius's Bathtub and the Cackling of the Geese	38	(14)
The Symbol and the Faith	52	(14)
Gold, Salt, and the Blessed Town	66	(8)
The Legacy of Eoba, Babba, and Udd	74	(11)
The Great Chain Reaction	85	(11)
The Disintegrating Age and the Kings' Ransoms	96	(18)
The Sacred Thirst	114	(21)
THE PATH TO TRIUMPH
The Fatal Poison and Private Money	135	(23)
The Asian Necropolis and Hien Tsung's Inadvertent Innovation	158	(17)
The Great Recoinage and the Last of the Magicians	175	(23)
The True Doctrine and the Great Evil	198	(21)
The New Mistress and the Cursed Discovery	219	(20)
The Badge of Honor	239	(21)
The Most Stupendous Conspiracy and the Endless Chain	260	(23)
THE DESCENT FROM GLORY
The Norman Conquest	283	(23)
The End of the Epoch	306	(22)
The Transcending Value	328	(18)
World War Eight and the Thirty Ounces of Gold	346	(21)
Epilogue: The Supreme Possession?	367	(6)
Notes	373	(24)
Bibliography	397	(12)
Index	409