What Can We Learn From the Romans About Money?

Credit crunches, monetary policy and foreign property as an investment. These were key facets of ancient Rome’s financial system. They’re pretty well-known now, too.

In fact, ex-Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke could have taken a lesson from Tiberius and his handling of his own recession 1,975 years before the financial crisis. So says economist David McWilliams, who joins this week’s episode of Merryn Talks Money to discuss the long history of money. He tells Merryn Somerset Webb how the invention and proliferation of currency helped fuel Rome’s rise and eventually its fall.