Here’s the second installment to Best of Books 2022. Last week we reviewed highlights from this column over the past year. With just hours to go before 2022 goes dark, here’s the second batch of books that captured our attention over the preceding 12 months. Cheers!
Edward Chancellor
Review via The Economist
The critics who label as artificial the low interest rates that have prevailed in the world economy in recent decades must therefore answer the question: low relative to what?
“The Price of Time” is the answer of Edward Chancellor, a historian and financier who has written a book by that name. Humans prefer jam today to jam tomorrow. Interest rates are the reward for deferring gratification, for renting out money that could have been spent today. When rates fall too low, grave consequences follow: financial instability, higher inequality and pain for savers. As he makes his case, Mr Chancellor’s panoptic survey of the history of interest, and what classical economists said about it, will not fail to dazzle. The argument, however, is seriously flawed.
