By keeping interest rates near zero for over a decade, central banks have created profound economic insecurity and financial fragility.

That’s the argument of financial historian Edward Chancellor, guest on the latest New Money Review podcast.

Chancellor, author of a new book called ‘the Price of Time’, says that extremely low interest rates have caused unsustainable asset price inflation, including the recent bubbles in cryptocurrency and tech stocks.

And near-zero rates, says Chancellor, are also largely responsible for the weak economic growth, rising inequality, zombie companies, elevated debt levels and the pensions crises that have afflicted the West in recent years.

Listen to the podcast to hear Chancellor and New Money Review editor Paul Amery discuss:

• How low interest rates have created tensions in markets, the economy and society
• The ancient debate over whether money should pay interest
• Why the lender at interest is ‘selling time’
• Enlightenment thinking, natural rights and interest on loans
• Low interest rates, credit bubbles, financial manias and crashes
• Why John Law’s 1720 Mississippi scheme prefigured quantitative easing
• How Ben Bernanke turned the Fed into the world’s largest hedge fund
• The parallels between financial markets and complex natural systems
• The UK’s leveraged pension fund debacle
• Why the lowest rates ever created the everything bubble
• Iceland’s post-2008 debt jubilee
• Capital controls and why financial globalisation is coming to an end