Popes and Bankers
A Cultural History of Credit and Debit from Aristotle to AIG

Signed First Edition!
In his upbeat and engaging new book, Popes and Bankers, Jack Cashill reverse engineers the train wreck of the economy back to its (surprising) roots. You'll enjoy this accessible, upbeat, engaging and even amusing history of the endlessly fascinating topic of credit and debt, which has shaped civilization in ways even bankers cannot begin to imagine.

With a dizzying cast of characters, including church officials, loan sharks, the founding fathers, Martin Luther, Karl Marx, FDR, J.P Morgan, Michael Milken, Barney Frank, and even the Knights Templar, Cashill traces the creative tension between “pious restraint” and “economic ambition” through the annals of human history and illuminates both the dark corners of our past and the dusty corners of our billfolds. 

Readers of Popes and Bankers will: 

• appreciate the unappreciated role Judeo-Christian culture has played in creating the world’s greatest economy
• meet the great financiers who brought that economy to life—the Medici, the Rothschilds, the Morgans
• perceive the threats to that culture from philosophers, madmen, revolutionaries, “quants,” politicians, and Ponzi artists, including Charles Ponzi himself
• understand why our political leaders refuse to face up to contemporary cultural threats