How much do I know about money?

 In the old tradition of "I only know that I know nothing", I definitely don't know how to quantify any money knowledge of  mine. And when I look around me, I don't find any ready guide. Some persons study English assiduously, and at some point declare something like "I have 40% English". Once I met a fellow who proudly claimed that "in my country I have 10th Standard". 

Well, good for them. And I presume they have some test results to back their claims. Not necessarily formal tests results. Some textbooks have a test at the end, kind of an appendix, that you can use to evaluate your understanding, and provided that the textbook effectively covers its subject matter, that test should give you a valid evaluation. But who has a textbook for "money"?

Several decades back, I walked into a city library in North Carolina (the State in the Eastern coast of the USA). I was broke and frustrated, and I had been sharing my life with a motley collection of folks that were also broke and frustrated. All of them, with no exception. But, knowledge is good for you, isn't it? The truth shall set you free. And you find knowledge in books, right? Books hold the accumulated wisdom of mankind, don't they?

So I walked up to the cabinet holding all those index cards. Thousands and thousands of them. In the BC days (before computers), that's how we searched for books in libraries. You say you've never seen anything like that? Lucky you. We even had to learn how to use those indexes. By author, by date, by subject, by title, and yes, by keywords. But no googling. And no ads polluted your search results.

So I valiantly searched for "money". And BINGO! there it was: "The Money Book". Or "The Book of Money". Or some similar title. This happened a long time ago, so I have no hope of remembering the exact title. I wrote down the location, walked around a few aisles, and found it. A tall book with thick covers and glossy pages. I couldn't believe such an important book even existed, much less that I was so fortunate as to have it in my hands.

I found an empty table, opened my book and voila! pages and glossy pages of pictures. Shells, and beads, and coins and bank notes, coins and bank notes, and more coins and more bank notes. That book should have been called "The book of cool coins and bank notes".

There was not much text in that book, and what there was was already too much. I think I can summarize that book as follows: "Many things have been used as money, mostly coins and bank notes". There, I just saved you the time I spent reading that book. Not that it took that long.

I was trying to learn about "money", and that book was about "money". But that book was definitely not what I was looking for. I was already frustrated, and that book (and others like it) just added to my frustration. I and other persons like me perceived that we had a "money" problem, but that book didn't offer any solutions.

Other than, perhaps, we should mint our own coins and print our own bank notes? Just like so many others before.

Many years later, I realized that the word "money" is used to mean many different things. And even later I found out some brainy articles about "commodity money" and "fiat money". Yes, I found all that on the Internet. And after some additional reflection, I decided that "fiat money" is what really got me all confused and twisted into knots. Of all the different kinds of "money" people may talk about.

So that is all the knowledge I claim about money. I claim that a lot of the obscure, arcane, downright pointy headed talk about "money" we hear in the news every day is in reality about "fiat money". Not about lovely crafted ancient Chinese notes, Roman Sesterces, American Civil War "Greenbacks", or even the coins and bank notes you may have in your pocket.

So forget the glossy, shiny pictures. There are none. All those billions and trillions of Japanese Yen and Euros and even US Dollars are utterly invisible, weightless, devoid of volume and hardness and definitely do not conduct electricity. Fiat money is just numbers in "ledgers" (obscure word for "records"), maintained in computers somewhere.

And yet "Fiat Money" is an important part of our lives. If you command enough of it, you can have your own Covid-free yacht with food and fuel and whatever else you may need. Not enough "Fiat Money", and your whole country sits at the bottom of the Covid vaccine supply line. Fiat money gets you running water, heating, and air conditioning. No fiat money and you get evicted. And so on.

Realizing all that, sane, logical, reasonable persons immediately apply their minds to the problem of how to get enough "fiat money".

But Big Money Gazer is not reasonable, or logical, and definitely not sane. Big Money Gazer is hell bent on dissecting and analyzing this "fiat money" ethereal monster. Whatever the consequences.

Join me if you will. At your own risk.