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Because we take it for granted |
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we tend to underestimate the extent to which our entire civilisation is based on the borrowing and lending of money |
| [00:12.70] |
No, it doesn't literally make the world go round |
| [00:15.32] |
But it does make vast quantities of people, goods and services go around the world from Babylon to Bolivia |
| [00:24.39] |
The puzzle is that the early moneylenders got so little thanks for their services |
| [00:29.91] |
On the contrary, they were widely reviled as pariahs |
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Why was that? |
| [00:48.50] |
Welcome to Northern Italy in the year 1200AD |
| [00:56.64] |
A land divided into multiple feuding city states |
| [01:04.29] |
a land where trust was in rather short supply |
| [01:09.62] |
Among the many remnants of the defunct Roman Empire |
| [01:12.60] |
was a numerical system singularly ill-suited to complex mathematical calculation |
| [01:18.29] |
let alone the needs of commerce |
| [00:12.26] |
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