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Subtitle: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing, Hachette Books, NY., 2020,
257 pgs., index, notes
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Reviewer comment:
The author comes closer than any other I have read in explaining the real
nature of money. His historical examples skip many centuries between ancient
and 17th century eras. He sometimes mixes currency and credit. But he does
claim that money is an idea, a 'made-up thing". He is a skilled writer an
creates an enjoyable read. Actually 'money' is neither currency nor credit. It
is the metric by which the 'value' of a quantity of either is measured. And
that 'value' is not fixed, it is relative, in time and place, depending on the
desireability of the thing (material or imaginary) is compared with all other
things. Currency and credit are tokens by which a measure of 'value' may be
transmitted during an exchange of goods or services or may be held in
expectation of their use in a future exchange. They represent the 'debt' that
exists during the period in which the exchange has not been completed.
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I - Inventing Money
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Chapter 1 - The Origin of Money
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Chapter 2 - When We Invented Paper Money, Had an Economic
Revolution,Then tried to Forget the whole Thing Ever happened
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II - The Murderer, the Boy King, and the Invention of Capitalism
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Chapter 3 - How Goldsmiths Accidentally re-Invented Banks (and Brought
Panic To Britain)
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Chapter 4 - How to Get Rich with Probability
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Chapter 5 - Finance as Time Travel: Inventing the Stock Market
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Chapter 6 John Law Gets to Print Money
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Chapter 7 The Invention of Millionaires
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III - More Money
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Chapter 8 - Everybody Can Have More Money
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Chapter 9 - But Really Can Everybody have More Money?
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IV - Modern Money
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Chapter 10 - The Gold Standard: A Love Story
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Chapter 11 - Just Don't Call it Central Bank
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Chapter 12 - Money Is Dead, Long Live Money
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V -Twenth-First-Century Money
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Chapter 13 - How two Guys in a Room Invented a New Kind of Money
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Chapter 14 - A Brief History of the Euro (and Why the Dollar Works
Beter)
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Chapter 15 - The Radical Dream of Digital Cash
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Conclusion - The Future of Money
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