The history of financial mistakes
Money Box
BBC
4.2 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 4 January 2020
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
History is littered with tales of financial error – many instantly familiar even though they may have taken place several centuries apart.
Why do we keep on making the same mistakes with our money and what can we do to stop making them?
Paul Lewis discusses with Russell Napier, the Keeper of Edinburgh's Library of Mistakes, Prof Nicky Marsh who is writing a book on the history of financial advice and Dr Joe Gladstone from UCL's School of Management who helps people make better behavioural choices with their money.
Picture: General Gregor Macgregor - Scottish soldier, adventurer and confidence trickster.
Producer: Alex Lewis Editor: Emma Rippon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In Northern Ireland, from the late 70s to the early 90s, the IRA killed over 40 alleged informers. |
| 0:08.0 | But the man who often found, tortured and sometimes killed these people on behalf of the IRA |
| 0:12.0 | was himself an informer, a secret British army agent with the codename Stakeknife. |
| 0:18.0 | Who gets to play God? And why me? Why my family? When lies are still being told to this day, |
| 0:24.0 | who do you believe? I wouldn't even know where to start, and I'm with the IRA. |
| 0:28.5 | Steakknife. Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.5 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:39.4 | Hello, happy new year. |
| 0:42.5 | And for the sheep out there listening, happy new teeth. |
| 0:48.2 | We begin this first money box of the 20s with the story of sheep's dentures, |
| 0:49.8 | or as they were properly called. |
| 0:58.0 | Splint for stabilising animal teeth, patent number GB20-86730. The economic value of an animal, for example, a sheep, is enhanced by bonding the incisor teeth together in a group, |
| 1:06.0 | when the teeth are fully matured but before the trauma of the teeth has occurred, |
| 1:11.3 | with an apertured brace which is bonded to the group of teeth by means of a hardened bonding composition, |
| 1:17.7 | to leave the incisal edges of the group of teeth exposed. |
| 1:22.1 | The invention also relates to a splint for stabilising animal teeth to reduce the risk of trauma. |
| 1:29.6 | Ah, those apertured braces. Well, that plan for fitting dentures to sheep dates back 40 years to 1980. |
| 1:37.2 | People invested in the idea, but it didn't work. And it's the first of the financial mistakes |
| 1:42.4 | we're looking at in this first money box of the new year. |
| 1:46.0 | Let's go live now to Inverness and talk to Russell Napier. |
| 1:48.9 | He's a financial consultant and expert in how financial markets work, |
| 1:52.8 | but he's also keeper of the library of mistakes in Edinburgh. |
... |
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