The Land Trap

This is the story of the worlds oldest asset and how it has sparked revolutions, fuelled huge economic booms, led to the worst financial crises in history, and still poses the greatest risks to our prosperity today.Land is a unique resource, ungoverned by the laws of supply and demand: it cannot be produced, its supply is fixed and it does not decay. In this sweeping and vivid history, journalist for The Economist and podcaster Mike Bird places land at the epicentre of the global economy, and contemporary business, politics, and history. The tumultuous narrative of land as an asset takes us to ancient Babylon, seventeenth-century colonial America and modern Chinas gargantuan property bubble. It shows how land came to hold the central role in the global banking system, as well as in the finances of ordinary households and businesses around the world.