Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money"In 2006, the British Financial Services Authority carried out a survey of public financial literacy which revealed...one [person] in ten did not know which was the better discount for a television originally priced at 250 pounds: 30 pounds or 10 per cent. As that example makes clear, the questions posed by the surveys were of the most basic nature. It seems reasonable to assume that only a handful of those polled would have been able to explain the difference between a 'put' and a 'call' option, for example, much less the difference between a CDO and a CDS" (14).
The book is like A Short History of Progress + Planet Money + having a meandering chat with Alex Dick from UBC's English Dept.
Definitely accessible and easy to get into, & he quotes Dante!
