The Story of Money Part 2

            As promised, I am back with a sequel to the last piece about the story of money.  I mentioned that the main features of money are durability, divisibility, and wide acceptance as having value.  I also mentioned that these have not always been the case and that there is at least one notable exception that comes to mind, in the area of divisibility.  But this story in turn will take...

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The Story of Money

What is money and why do we need it?  How did it come about in the first place?  This is a question that I addressed in conversation recently with a friend after visiting the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, its equivalent of the Federal Reserve. Everyone knows intuitively what money is: a medium of exchange and permanent store of value.  In other words, one person has coins and bills and another person has coffee beans,...

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China Seminar Post 3: The Real Wealth of Nations

            During one of our several university visits the lecturing professor gave us a particularly unique and memorable talk.  The typical speech we’d receive in these lectures tended to involve an economic lesson about some area that was growing such as how the city was planning to develop their infrastructure in this or that industry, or how 300 million people had migrated from rural areas to the cities, or how income has risen dramatically in the past several decades since the...

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