I listened to this last summer, but it took me a long time to write something so here it is: the book talks about the first great financial crisis, the South Sea bubble.
The actual full title is “Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich” which is an appropriately verbose title to talk about the early 18th century.
The South Sea bubble is one of those things that often come up when talking of the issues of the financial system, together with tulip mania and John Law’s bankrupting of France, but I had never actually understood what happened there.
The book explains that, and it does it in a fairly enjoyable way, without being too preachy and showing how disastrous events came about following a lot of reasonable choices and only a modicum of dishonesty. It also explains how innovations from the era have become staples of our modern world (e.g. ideas on how to compute the value of financial investments).
Where the book fails, imo, is trying to connect the events with contemporary developments in science and mathematics. There are connection (Isaac Newton was Master of the Mint after all) but they seem kinda stretched.
Also, in the most important bits, I felt the explanation could have been better, I could not understand, at first, how the South Sea company could make any sense.
The South Sea company was funded as a way for the government to get rid of a bunch of previous debt obligations: the government allowed the creation of a company that could emit shares in exchange for obligations, and the government would grant the company the monopoly of the South Seas trade (notice the plural, and realize this meant slave trade).
The government would get simplified accounting as it now only owes money to the company (and at a lower rate), the company owners would make money, but why would an investor give their government-baked bonds to the company? Well, because they were forced to, but the book doesn’t really explain why they couldn’t be forced even without the company existing?
I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter, since people were eager to do the exchange as they had very little trust in the government, and because soon the share price was skyrocketing, and stonks only go up is not a modern invention.
Anyway, the book does a pretty good job of explaining the situation before, during, and after, and if you have a casual interest in finance or economics, I recommend this book.
Vote: 7+/10, recommended if you like finance, and seeing the world burn.