| [00:00.30] | |
| [00:04.59] | Because we take it for granted |
| [00:06.15] | 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 |
| [00:35.29] | 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] |