Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing

by Jacob Goldstein

Overview

The co-host of the popular NPR podcast Planet Money provides a well-researched, entertaining, somewhat irreverent look at how money is a made-up thing that has evolved over time to suit humanity's changing needs.


Money only works because we all agree to believe in it. In Money, Jacob Goldstein shows how money is a useful fiction that has shaped societies for thousands of years, from the rise of coins in ancient Greece to the first stock market in Amsterdam to the emergence of shadow banking in the 21st century.


At the heart of the story are the fringe thinkers and world leaders who reimagined money. Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor, created paper money backed by nothing, centuries before it appeared in the west. John Law, a professional gambler and convicted murderer, brought modern money to France (and destroyed the country's economy). The cypherpunks, a group of radical libertarian computer programmers, paved the way for bitcoin.


One thing they all realized: what counts as money (and what doesn't) is the result of choices we make, and those choices have a profound effect on who gets more stuff and who gets less, who gets to take risks when times are good, and who gets screwed when things go bad.

Lively, accessible, and full of interesting details (like the 43-pound copper coins that 17th-century Swedes carried strapped to their backs), Money is the story of the choices that gave us money as we know it today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316417198
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	09/08/2020
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	925,803
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Jacob Goldstein is the host of the podcast What’s Your Problem? Previously, he hosted NPR's Planet Money for more than a decade. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, This American Life,  and Morning Edition, and he was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, the Miami Herald, and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He lives, perhaps inevitably, in Brooklyn with his wife and two children.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xi

I Inventing Money l

Chapter 1 The Origin of Money 3

Chapter 2 When We Invented Paper Money, Had an Economic Revolution, Then Tried to Forget the Whole Thing Ever Happened 13

II The Murderer, the Boy King, and the Invention of Capitalism 25

Chapter 3 How Goldsmiths Accidentally Re-Invented Banks (and Brought Panic to Britain) 27

Chapter 4 How to Get Rich with Probability 35

Chapter 5 Finance as Time Travel: Inventing the Stock Market 45

Chapter 6 John Law Gets to Print Money 55

Chapter 7 The Invention of Millionaires 63

III More Money 75

Chapter 8 Everybody Can Have More Money 77

Chapter 9 But Realty: CAN Everybody Have More Money? 89

IV Modern Money 99

Chapter 10 The Gold Standard: A Love Story 101

Chapter 11 Just Don't Call It a Central Bank 117

Chapter 12 Money Is Dead. Long Live Money 135

V Twenty-First-Century Money 149

Chapter 13 How Two Guys in a Room Invented a New Kind of Money 151

Chapter 14 A Brief History of the Euro (and Why the Dollar Works Better) 169

Chapter 15 The Radical Dream of Digital Cash 187

Conclusion: The Future of Money 213

Acknowledgments 227

Notes 229

Index 243

Editorial Reviews

A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Selection in Business & Economics

"Jacob Goldstein is a lucid, entertaining explainer of all things economic."
—Ira Glass, host and executive producer of "This American Life"

"A sweeping new history....Money is fast-paced and chatty: We meet all the characters an academic book would include, their ideas and innovations blended with scandal and gossip to propel the story along. The effect is a history of currency full of astonishing tales you might tell a friend in the pub....This story gets to the heart of why money matters....Money should be required reading for every financial regulator....Money is great preparation for turbulent times: a vibrant and accessible grounding in how the evolution of cash — organic, random, and social — really works."
—The New York Times

"Jacob Goldstein makes the complexities of economics and monetary policy not just comprehensible, but also genuinely fascinating. Charting the history of money becomes a lens through which to understand human history, and how we arrived at now."—John Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Turtles All the Way Down and The Fault in Our Stars

"Jacob Goldstein of 'Planet Money' has a remarkable gift for making complicated economic issues beguilingly simple. He has written a wonderfully entertaining, freewheeling history of money, told with all the verve and wit and smart insights that have made his NPR show such a success."—Liaquat Ahamed, author of Pulitzer Prize winner Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

"With shrewd observations and snappy anecdotes, Goldstein... shows how currency may be humanity's most successful fiction."—The New York Times (Editors' Choice)

"This is largely an optimistic book... money might be the one thing that we all still believe in....There's very little moralizing in [the] book."
—NPR "Morning Edition"

"It's no surprise that money has taken us on some wild rides over the centuries. In Money, Goldstein invites readers along for those adventures, serving as a first-rate tour guide throughout."
—Columbia magazine

"It is rare for a work on a subject so fraught with interpretation and misinterpretation to be both funny and accessible, beautiful and conversational, but Goldstein's Money hits the bullseye in every respect. It made me look at my wallet and its musty contents with fresh eyes. A must-read."—Gary Shteyngart, author of the New York Times bestsellers Little Failure and Super Sad True Love Story

“Certainly one of the most entertaining [books about the history of currency]….Jacob Goldstein covers over five millennia, including witty, incisive, and sometimes surprising takes.”—Reuters

"Goldstein is a master storyteller who weaves an intriguing tale of how money and economic systems rose, fell, and rose again. In his hands, money disappears and the personalities and motives of centuries-old influencers emerge in vivid detail to paint a picture of the history that has given us our current monetary system."
—Betsey Stevenson, professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan

"[Money is] jaunty, comedic, short, and informative."—"The Gist" with Mike Pesta

"Thoroughly researched but thoroughly entertaining... told as a series of stories by one of radio's great storytellers."—Radio Spectrum

"A brisk, brightly told history....Goldstein deftly clarifies economic concepts....An informative primer from a genial guide."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Goldstein's entertaining storytelling style makes complicated ideas clear and engaging. Money is a must-read for all those who've ever wondered what their paycheck actually means."
—Booklist (starred review)

From the Publisher

2020-06-30
An economic expert chronicles the evolution of money.

Goldstein, co-host of NPR’s podcast Planet Money, offers a brisk, brightly told history of money, ranging from lumps of metal used in ancient Greek city-states to invisible bitcoin traded online. Money, the author argues convincingly, is “a made-up thing, a shared fiction.” He continues, “a pretty good working definition of money is: it’s the thing you pay taxes with. In a world where different things are competing to be money—bills of exchange, silver and gold coins, notes from private banks—the thing the government accepts for taxes is going to win.” Besides tracing different forms that money has taken, Goldstein introduces a roster of quirky individuals who influenced monetary policy: among them, 17th-century Scotsman John Law, an inveterate gambler cognizant of the probability theory put forth by the “weirdo genius” Blaise Pascal and who powerfully shaped the French economy; Nicholas Biddle, president of America’s first central bank (at a time when the U.S. had 8,370 different kinds of paper money), who drew Andrew Jackson’s ire; Yale economist Irving Fisher, who redefined the dollar “as a fixed basket of stuff”; and Bruce Bent, inventor of the money-market fund. Goldstein deftly clarifies economic concepts, distinguishing, for example, the real economy (“the carpenter who builds your house”) from finance (“the banker who lends you money to buy the house”). Finance, he explains, “matches people who are willing to give up money now for the possibility of more money later with people who need money now and are willing to pay back more money later. Finance moves money around in time.” The author also explains the underpinnings of the 2008 financial crisis, the consequences of the adoption of the euro, and the possibilities of money in the future: the disappearance of cash, for one, and the end of banks.

An informative primer from a genial guide.

Kirkus Reviews

In this well-researched examination of all aspects of money, the host of an NPR personal finance podcast offers a primer on where it came from, how it works today, and where it’s going. His brisk performance is easy to understand and fun to hear. Goldstein’s broad grasp of his topic expresses itself in snappy vignettes full of colorful personalities that keep the momentum going. With casual confidence, he opens with the origins of money—beads and 43-pound coins—emphasizing that whatever form money takes, it has value only when people agree it does. From the gold standard to the rise of capital markets and macroeconomics, no aspect of this ubiquitous necessity eludes his curiosity. He closes with an illuminating look at banking, credit cards, and digital currencies like Bitcoin. T.W. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2021 - AudioFile

In this well-researched examination of all aspects of money, the host of an NPR personal finance podcast offers a primer on where it came from, how it works today, and where it’s going. His brisk performance is easy to understand and fun to hear. Goldstein’s broad grasp of his topic expresses itself in snappy vignettes full of colorful personalities that keep the momentum going. With casual confidence, he opens with the origins of money—beads and 43-pound coins—emphasizing that whatever form money takes, it has value only when people agree it does. From the gold standard to the rise of capital markets and macroeconomics, no aspect of this ubiquitous necessity eludes his curiosity. He closes with an illuminating look at banking, credit cards, and digital currencies like Bitcoin. T.W. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2021 - AudioFile