This is the third and final volume of this history of finance. The first volume
covered the period from the “discovery” of America to the end of the nineteenth
century. The second volume traced the growth of finance through the
first seven decades of the twentieth century. The present volume focuses on
the growth of derivatives, the savings and loan crisis, the merger mania of the
1980s, the accompanying insider trading scandals, and the battle with inflation.
This history then reviews the market run-up in the 1990s and the rebirth
of finance that was being strongly pushed by the Internet economy as the
third millennium began.