The Price of Time

The Real Story of Interest

By: Edward Chancellor

Narrated by: Luis Soto

Length: 15 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

The first audiobook of the next crisis.

All economic and financial activities take place across time. Interest coordinates these activities. The story of capitalism is thus the story of interest: the price that individuals, companies and nations pay to borrow money.

In The Price of Time, Edward Chancellor traces the history of interest from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia, through debates about usury in Restoration Britain and John Law's ill-fated Mississippi scheme, to the global credit booms of the twenty-first century. We generally assume that high interest rates are harmful, but Chancellor argues that, whenever money is too easy, financial markets become unstable. He takes the story to the present day, when interest rates have sunk lower than at any time in the five millennia since they were first recorded—including the extraordinary appearance of negative rates in Europe and Japan—and highlights how this has contributed to profound economic insecurity and financial fragility.

Chancellor reveals how extremely low interest rates not only create asset price inflation but are also largely responsible for weak economic growth, rising inequality, zombie companies, elevated debt levels and the pensions crises that have afflicted the West in recent years—conditions under which economies cannot possibly thrive. At the same time, easy money in China has inflated an epic real estate bubble, accompanied by the greatest credit and investment boom in history. As the global financial system edges closer to yet another crisis, Chancellor shows that only by understanding interest can we hope to face the challenges ahead.

©2022 Edward Chancellor (P)2022 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"The Price of Time is highly readable. The timing and telling of this economic horror story make it gripping and persuasive." (Emma Duncan)

"Is it possible to write a highly engaging history of the world going back to Hammurabi, unfolding along the way a bitingly comprehensive explanation for its problems today, all told through a single character? Apparently yes. Edward Chancellor has done it, an achievement all the more notable since his drama is built around a character so unheroic on its surface: his "price of time" is interest rates. This is a timely, vitally important and hugely readable book." (Ruchir Sharma)

"Edward Chancellor has produced not just a brilliant explainer of the value of money and time but a hugely engaging history of the greatest problem confronting markets today. The Price of Time is a must read - a copy should be on the desk of everyone who has anything to do with financial markets or wondered why things work as they do." (Merryn Somerset Webb)

Great insights

Fantastic history of the world of finance and puts the current weird world of monetary policy we have created brilliantly into context.

Brilliant work of history once again

The book pretty much covers the history of rates and the impact of setting this price at a divergence from what markets are offering. Most of the writings feel so obvious and agreeable that one would wonder how we traveled much far from these assertions. Highly recommended

Read this book!

Time is the price of money, and money is born from time.

This book is revealing especially with the monetary excesses made by both governments and the population of the globe, regardless of nation.

Interesting book, poor recording

The book is interesting, although very comprehensive, but unfortunately the recording is so poor that it almost ruins the experience. Frequently you can hear parts are filled in (probably because of errors in the original recording). This is really disturbing

The book is, well, ok

The author’s argument are well made in parts. In other parts the book reads not as an argument, but an insistence.

% is not always good, can be bad; it’s the best way we know

(A good book, once they re-record it. Technical flaws are horrible, disturb the otherwise interesting book)
The credit and profit from use of capital is older than capitalism. Listen to this book to learn how you want to use it to your advantage.