On Wednesday, November 4th, financial and economic historian Niall Ferguson visited the Young Leaders Circle to discuss the claim of his bestselling book, The Ascent of Money, that the evolution of the finance is the foundation for all human progress. He described the “six pillars of the modern financial system” — banking, bonds, corporate stock, insurance, sophisticated investment instruments, and residential real estate, with the sequential evolution of each leading to exponential advances in a given society's development.

Ferguson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and a distinguished professor at Harvard. He is also a contributing editor for the Financial Times and a regular contributor to Newsweek. Four of Ferguson's books on financial history, including The Ascent of Money, have been turned into PBS and BBC documentaries. In 2004, Time magazine named him as one of the world's hundred most influential people.

Visit Niall Ferguson's web site here.

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