Debt, bonds, securities, they all sound like doom-laden words in our time. But actually, they are not. The History of Debt goes back to the beginning of human civilisation and shows for the first time how debt is one of the most ancient secret forces of equality among humans. The more debt, the more democracy is what history teaches us. The History of Debt raises profound questions about the complex relationship of leadership, democracy, war and trust that underpins today's relative world peace, and the surprising and seemingly ceaseless bias to democracy of the past hundred years as debt levels soar.

Author Biography

James Macdonald received a double first from Cambridge before moving to New York to work for an investment bank. He was involved in settling the Latin-American, Russian and Asian debt crisis. Following a reverse career path to the one-time academic-thens-peculator George Soros, he left international banking at the age of 45 and spent four years researching A History of Debt - his first book.