History of Money, Banking, and Trade
A historical look at the development and evolution of money, banking, and trade. From the ancient civilizations to the present.
History of Money, Banking, and Trade
Latest Episodes
Episode 62. Money Survives Even When Empires Collapse
The sun rises in 536 CE, but it looks wrong, cold, bluish, dim enough to stare at. That one eerie detail opens the door to a chain reaction that hits everything a money system depends on: harvests, shipping, taxes, loans, labor, and trust. I us...
Episode 61. Rome's Price Edict and the Western Empire's Fall
A stone panel goes up in Roman cities listing the “legal” price of everything from wheat to boots to a teacher’s monthly wage and the punishment for overcharging is death. Diocletian throws the full weight of the Roman Empire behind price contr...
Episode 60. The Roman Empire’s Currency Collapse And The Day Power Went To Auction
Rome didn’t “decline” in the third century so much as it got repriced, brutally, by its own army. We open with one of the most jaw-dropping moments in political and monetary history: after murdering Pertinax, the Praetorian Guard auctions the R...
Episode 59. Rome’s Financial Peak and Hidden Cracks (68–180 CE): From Nero to Marcus Aurelius
Rome didn’t just conquer with legions. It conquered with cash flow, credibility, and contracts and then it quietly broke the very engine that paid for its golden age. We walk through the most consequential 112 years in Roman financial history, ...
Episode 58. The Architect, the Steward, and the Showman — Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and the Debasement That Started It All
Nero is famous for fire and scandal, but his most lasting move is quieter: he changes the denarius. We follow the early Roman Empire from Augustus’s careful fiscal rebuild to the moment Nero discovers a tool every government eventually confront...