Worth a listen. In fact, he almost endorses my most wrong view!! He says that currency and markets emerged from plunder. However, he does say that there were early trading nations that were not plundering empires.

He also has provocative things to say about our credit boom. In particular, he argues historically that the political system tends to go easy on debtors, but does not help creditors, but in our society we are doing it the other way around. I am inclined to respond by asking what are all the foreclosure-prevention plans if not an attempt to go easy on debtors?

Thanks to a commenter on this post.