Have you ever wondered what money really was? What is behind its mystique? Well, it is not gold coins. It is not a basket of fish, or a truck load of bread. Money is an idea. It is an idea backed by confidence. Nothing more. Once we had to have gold as the standard of that confidence, but now there is enough confidence in the production of products that money was backed by the production of the country and land instead.

So what else is money? Money can be considered a negotiable receipt for deposited goods. How it once worked was that a goldsmith would accept somebody’s gold and give that person a receipt in exchange, which in turn became money. But then, one day, realizing the goldsmith’s repute was good with these receipts and that they had become negotiable, he loaned a receipt based on the gold someone else, as had deposited. Then the goldsmith loaned out several receipts on the same gold. And that is how banking started. (more…)