The title, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, pretty much sums up the book’s thesis. This is actually Kevin Phillips’ third book on the subject matter, the first two being - American Theocracy and Wealth and Democracy. I haven’t read the first two of his books, but he freely admits in the introduction to Bad Money that the book is somewhat of a rehash of his first two books. In fact, he discusses almost not writing a third book until he realized that those topics he warned us of in his previous books were finally coming to fruition and that

Just reading the newspapers gives me a daily diet of economic gloom. For example, my pessimism for today (Aug. 26) started with the headline of my local newspaper this morning. The Pittsburgh Tribune Review delivered a banner message, “Record Red Forecast at $1.58 Trillion.” (I think they printed the newspaper before the word came out that Sen. Ted Kennedy died.)

Then for a national perspective, I looked at The Wall Street Journal, which published a slightly different alliteration, “Decade of Debt: $9 Trillion.” And finally, for an international view, The Financial Times summed it all up in characteristic British understatement, with, “US Says Debt Outlook Worsening.” Oh, you don’t say.

The big problem – obviously, the headline issue – with the US economy is too much debt. (That’s the BIG problem. There’s a long list of other problems after that.) And the debt problem is getting worse, not better.

Debt is ubiquitous across

Are we done with this recession? I missed this discussion of a few days ago, featuring an economist, Nouriel Roubini of New York University, an historian, Niall Fergusson of Harvard, and a billionaire, real estate investor Mort Zuckerman, debating what is to come. Rather late than never, as the clip makes for good viewing material.

Embedded video from CNN Video

Did you enjoy this post? If so, click here to subscribe to updates to Investment Postcards from Cape Town by e-mail.

Niall Ferguson’s book, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, is now available in a full-length four-part documentary. Known for his intellectual firepower, Ferguson is an historian who specializes in financial and economic history and teaches at Harvard.

The Ascent of Money is well researched and especially relevant for putting the current financial crisis in historical context. As Ferguson said, “Money’s rise has never been a smooth upward ride … Financial history has repeatedly been interrupted by gut-wrenching crises, of which today’s is just the latest.”

Each of the parts lasts for about an hour, but is conveniently broken up into chapters should one only wish to view certain sections.

Part 1: From bullion to bubbles Ferguson examines the current global financial crisis in the context of the financial history of the West. Topics in this part include: the beginnings of money

From Luke Harding of the Guardian, the latest regrettable attacks on history and the politics of memory in Russia.

A group of British academics including the historian Orlando Figes and the poet and translator Robert Chandler have spoken out after authorities in Russia closed down a website dealing with the country's controversial Soviet past.

On 19 June the home affairs ministry in St Petersburg shut down the site www.hrono.info. The website had been Russia's largest online history resource, widely used by scholars in Russia and elsewhere as a unique source of biographical and historical material.

Officials said they closed the site because it published extracts from Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf. Today, however, its founder, Vyacheslav Rumyantsev, said the closure had nothing to do with Hitler, adding that the text was widely available elsewhere and was only summarised on the