Smallscreen

We now know that the current financial crisis is debt-driven: the child of over-extended mortgagees in the midwest of America and over-borrowed banks who picked up these loans in attractive but fatal parcels. For those Prospect readers wise enough to be in cash while the stock markets self-destruct, the big challenge is spotting the bottom of the market before piling in again. It's at times like these we should be able to turn to public service broadcasters for guidance. And this month Channel 4 and the BBC have not let us down.

Take episodes seven and eight of Little Dorrit (BBC1). Old William Dorrit has been languishing in Marshalsea debtors' prison. Now, in a truly Dickensian twist of good fortune, he is revealed as a wealthy heir and emerges blinking into the light, before taking in a grand tour of Europe. Can there be any more reassuring sight than Tom Courtenay as Old Dorrit? Just like the disciples in Life of Brian we can say, truly, "He has given us a sign!" For this came during the week of the 21st November, when the FTSE100 fell below 3,900. The BBC drama department was clearly calling the bottom of the market with a deft use of metaphor. Yea, and shall the debtors throw off their shackles. I peered closely at the credits to see if the BBC's chief soothsayer, Robert Peston, was the co-author of the script. But the only name given was Andrew Davies. Financial forecasting is something of a departure for him, normally specialising, as he does, in ripping bodices and lesbian embraces.

Even before this "Buy!" signal was issued by the BBC, however, it was being countermanded by Channel 4. There, since the 17th November, The Ascent of Money has been charting the folly of man's relationship with cash across the centuries. The series could not be more timely. It is, rather bizarrely, sponsored by the Cayman Islands, which is another sign: in a savage advertising downturn you have to use considerable imagination. Before I go into the programme itself, however, let me get my carp out of the way. Someone needs to restrain its presenter, Niall Ferguson, when he writes the "teases" at the top of each programme. In the first edition, it was a clumsy cliché: "Call it what you like—money can make us or break us." In programme two, he resorted to sheer, reckless alliteration: "We may think power resides with presidents and prime ministers in palaces and parliaments." And in programme three we had this: "Stock markets can be shock markets." Spare us the shockney rhyming slang, Niall.

Anyway, The Ascent of Money is itself a well-made, informative and entertaining piece of work. I was taught A-level economics by a Welsh rugby fanatic called Taffy Richards. He used to intone, "Money is what money buys, Bazalgette." What did he mean? I didn't have a clue. Thanks to Niall Ferguson (pictured, right, at the Detroit Institute of Art) I'm now, after 37 years, beginning to get it. "Money is only worth what other people will give in exchange for it," explains the professor. But the series is far from being a dry treatise. Ferguson wears his learning lightly, hanging it on a number of good and unexpected yarns. The way the Spanish conquistador, Pisarro, grabbed so much silver from the Incas that he destroyed the price of the mineral in Europe. The military campaigns of the British mercenary, John Hawkwood, whose expeditions in Renaissance Tuscany needed the invention of the government bond for their funding. Nathan Rothschild, who helped finance the Duke of Wellington's army at Waterloo but later considered the American Confederates too much of a risk, thereby assisting their demise. Apparently, Nathan was a serious sort of chap, avoiding cards or the theatre: "My only pleasure is my business." No trips to Corfu for the founding generation of the banking dynasty.

And then there was Kenneth Lay, the Enron scoundrel. The detail I particularly enjoyed was his presentation of a wholly hubristic award—the Enron Award for Distinguished Public Service—to Alan Greenspan, the legend of the Federal Reserve. This was gratefully received by the old ham, who had sympathetically been printing the extra money which engendered all the "irrational exuberance" necessary for Lay's scams in the first place. Just two weeks later Enron filed for bankruptcy, admitting to $13bn of debt. Another $25bn of debt later materialised, having been hidden off the balance sheet. But Lay died before they could incarcerate him in the US equivalent of Marshalsea.

When it came to the 1720s, Ferguson could have retold the tale of the good, old South Sea bubble and its forerunner in Holland, tulip mania. But, more originally, he came up with John Law, another Scotsman who encouraged "boom and bust" while all the time denying it. This man took over France's finances, printed money faster than Mugabe and sold worthless shares in the French American colonies. All ended in inevitable collapse and he fled to Venice. According to the prof, the British economy of the time was based on debt and the French on plunder. Law cleverly managed to combine the two.

I note that The Ascent of Money is produced by Chimerica Media, a company whose principal is one Niall Ferguson. This is part of a trend whereby presenting talent are increasingly setting up their own vehicles so as to receive streams of revenue from both behind and in front of the camera. The recent swearing scandals around Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand (both with their own companies) were blamed by some on the BBC for allowing talent too much influence in the editorial chain of command. Rest assured, though, the only blasphemies I heard Ferguson utter were George, Dubya and Bush.