Rating: 
Summary: Good read on a Saturday night
Review: Professor Ferguson tries to examine the link between money and history. However Mr. Fergusson changes the argument around and persuades the reader that money does not influence history so much as warfare does. According to Mr. ferguson it is fighting between countries that has given rise to the modern state. One cannot predict when a nation will journey to war and so an apparatus(tax gathering and bond issuing) is left in place to cover any sudden conflict. Mr. Ferguson points out correctly that the state has moved away from a warfare viewpoint of government function to a welfare viewpoint. The best part of the book is the last chapter which criticizes the US for not getting involved in other countries' affairs due to a post Vietnam ambivalence. I would highly recommend this book simply because there is nothing out there right now which examines history in a different light. I would have given this a 5 star rating but Professor Fergusson tends TO REPEAT HIMSELF at times.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Research Yields An Excellent Book
Review: Reading this book has added a nuclear weapon to my swelling arsenal for the debates I keep having with my conspiracy-theory-loving friends. I find it not only well written, but extremely well documented. It has helped me search for further documentation in the everlasting campaign against Michael Moore types who are too lazy to search for fact based answers and rely on innuendo, ideology and oversimplified theories, which then are readjusted in complicated ways just to appear to fit new facts. These, inevitably, end with the statement: "That's what They want you to believe."
In this book, you'll find documentary evidence that there are no secret societies ruling the world, but an invisible hand, by the way of the international financial markets, that rewards and punishes nations for their actions. And these markets only follow the will of the many, not the few; even when the many allow themselves to be taken advantage into waging futile wars for reasons that may be personal, like royalty fighting other royals, or more abstract, like Nazis vying for "breathing space". Money is an instrument of war, not the cause of it.
Rating: 
Summary: All Things to All People
Review: The Cash Nexus is an overly ambitious attempt to re-examine the link between economics and politics in the post-Cold War period. The most interesting part of the book is the first 6 chapters, which focus on how state institutions have emerged over time to serve the needs of war finance--the principal impetus behind the rise of the modern state. These institutions produce what Ferguson calls an optimal combination for producing power and include 4 institutions: a professional tax gathering bureaucracy; a parliament that accords a measure of representation to tax payers; the management of a system of national debt, which allows the state to borrow; and a central bank to manage a currency and the national debt. Ferguson maintains that this combination first emerged in Britain after the Glorious Revolution and was later exported to other countries and, together, produced many unintended benefits, such as an educated civil service and expanded capital markets which served the needs of the economy. An important part of Ferguson's argument is that economic philosophies have produced two deterministic views of history--one Marxist and the other liberal capitalist. While one opposes capitalism and the other celebrates it, both see history as being essentially economic history. The modern variety of economic determinism (neoclassical economics) has produced three ideas that Ferguson criticizes: economic growth promotes democratization; economic success leads to re-election; and economic growth is the key to international power. While Ferguson's criticisms are interesting, there are a few shortcomings. One is that he makes the mistake of equating wealth with money when discussing liberal economics. In fact, the term money seems to be a synonym for economics wherever Ferguson discusses modern economic ideas on history, but he does not take note of the fact that liberal economics--whether classical or modern--does not view money as being the core of the economy. The dichotomy between Marxism and neoclassical economics appears too simple as well. He fails to note that much of the West--i.e., on the Continent of Europe--practices a rather different variety of capitalism than that suggested by the Anglo-American model, one that is corporatist and whose adherents are often in strong antipathy to open and competitive markets. The absence of this distinction becomes annoying when he discusses fixed exchange rates and monetary unions (Chapter 11). He argues that floating exchange rates and market instability cannot go on forever, that some sort of supranational controls are required. If we take the Anglo-American model to mean the way the United States and Britain operate, then fixed exchange rates and monetary unions are not part of that. In fact, proponents of this model generally argue against what Ferguson argues for.
Sections 3 and 4 (Chapters 7-14) cover so many different topics that the material does not integrate well into the core themes of the first two sections. A related matter is one of depth. While the research of other disciplines is frequently discussed (e.g., political science and economics), he often considers too thin a slice of that research to provide enough depth in any one place. While arguing against the idea that political manipulation of the business cycle always leads to re-election, for example, he does not engage most of the literature on this question. Another issue is the way in which data is used. Some of his charts present data across so many years and countries that it is hard to see the detail in the movement of the figures. This is especially true when the figures contain extreme values during the world wars. Ferguson returns to the warfare state at the end of the book to argue that the West is quite under-militarized and potentially vulnerable to more aggressive states. The United States should heed this warning and assert its role as a hegemonic power again. Ferguson concludes that money does not, after all, make the world go round. People are driven by motivations other than economic gain and power has many facets to it--some tangible and some not. While this may be true, it is not much of a revelation.
Rating:
Summary: A new type of non narrative history
Review: This is an interesting book as it is part of "the new history". Ferguson is a person who heads a team of researchers who collect a range of data. This data is then written up into a book. It is an interesting approach and breaks free of the simple narrative history of years gone by. This book is basically a history of the financial mechanisms of government and their effects. It is unusual to read a book which is written from what is largely an ideology free perspective. (The author has a mild bias towards free market mechanisms but he would not doubt suggest that instead of these representing a defined ideological position they reflect current what is now commonly accepted across the board as economic fact.) In some ways it is quite refreshing. The book also writes history free of the sorts of biases brought about by seeing history as a process. The development of democracy or the development of a national identity for instance. One thing which astounded me was the fact that no one ever in reality tried to manage overall levels of demand as advocated by Keynes. Even when Governments accepted Keynsian orthodoxy, they never used deficient financing to offset unemployment because of balance of payment considerations. The book basically sees the development of British financial institutions as the key to a large amount of modern history. Britain pioneered the use of salaried officials to collect tax, when they borrowed arrangements were put in place to ensure that such a debt would be repaid. The British system was successful in financing wars, the major expense of states until the 20th century and was adopted by all other states. The book however is more than a history of the financial arrangements of states. It is a discussion about the role of governments, what they have done historically and the sorts of things they do now and what challenges they face. Well worth a read.
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