The Dagger of Debt

Archimedes — a Greek mathematician — was born in 287 BC in the seaport city of Syracuse, Sicily. Some consider him as the greatest mathematician of all time. Although he’s known for the discovery of Archimedes Principle, his often quoted for his famous saying —

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

While Archimedes did not invent the lever, his did extensive work on the usage of levers. Archimedes designed block-and-tackle pulley systems, allowing sailors to use the principle of leverage to lift objects that would otherwise have been too heavy to move.

A lever is a simple machine that amplifies an input force to provide a greater output force, which is said to provide leverage. There isn’t a single mechanical device in the world which doesn’t use the laws of the lever.

When people realized that leverage could magnify the effect of non-physical things too the first thing they tried it on was money. In the last few decades, the world of finance has taken Archimedes’ words literally.

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