6139008-History-of-Money

It was the discovery of the touchstone that paved the way for metal-based commodity money and coinage.Any soft metal can be tested for purity on a touchstone, allowing one to quickly calculate the total content of a particularmetal in a lump. Gold is a soft metal, which is also hard to come by, dense, and storable. For these reasons gold as amoney spread very quickly from Asia Minor where it first gained wide use, to the entire world. Using such a system stillrequired several steps and some math. The touchstone allowed you to estimate the amount of gold in an alloy, which wasthen multiplied by the weight to find the amount of gold alone in a lump. To make this process easier, the concept ofstandard coinage was introduced. Coins were typically minted by governments in a carefully protected process, and thenstamped with an emblem that guaranteed the weight and value of the metal. It was however extremely common forgovernments to assert that the value of such money lay in its emblem and to subsequently debase the currency bylowering the content of valuable metal. Although gold and silver were commonly used to mint coins, other metals could beused. Ancient Sparta minted coins from iron to discourage its citizens from engaging in foreign trade. In the earlyseventeenth century Sweden lacked more precious metal and so produced "plate money," which were large slabs ofcopper approximately 50cm or more in length and width, appropriately stamped with indications of their value.Metal based coins had the advantage of carrying their value within the coins themselves — they induced on theother hand manipulations: the clipping of coins in attempts to get and recycle the precious metal. The bigger problem wasthe simple co-existence of gold, silver and copper coins in Europe's nations. English and Spanish traders valued gold coinsat a higher rate of silver coins than their neighbors would do, with the effect that the English gold-based guinea coinbegan to rise against the English silver based crown in the 1670s and 1680s and with the consequence that silver wasultimately pulled out of England for dubious amounts of gold coming into the country at a rate no other European nationwould share. The effect was worsened with Asian traders not sharing the European appreciation of gold altogether — goldleft Asia and silver left Europe in quantities European observers like [ http://www.pierremarteau.com/currency/ed/newton-1717-09-25.html] Isaac Newton, Master of the Royal Mint observed with uneasiness.Stability came into the system with privately owned disguised as national banks guaranteeing to change money into goldat a promised rate. The privately owned Bank of England (whose owners also owned the colonial East-IndiaCompany) risked a national financial catastrophe in the 1730s when customers demanded their money to bechanged into gold in a moment of crisis. Eventually London's merchants saved the bank and the nation with financialguarantees. See also: Roman currency, coinage metal, for conversions of the European coins before the introduction ofpaper money: The Marteau Early 18th-Century Currency Converter (http://www.pierremarteau.com/currency/converter.html) .The system of commodity money in many instances evolved into a system of representative money. In this system, thematerial that constitutes the money itself had very little intrinsic value, but none the less such money achieves significantmarket value through being scarce as an artifact. Representative money such as paper currency and non-preciouscoinage was backed by a government or private bank's promise to redeem it for a given weight of preciousmetal, such as silver. This is the origin of the term "British Pound" for instance; it was a unit of money backedby a Tower pound of sterling silver - hence the currency Pound Sterling. For much of the nineteenth and twentiethcenturies, many currencies were based on representative money through the use of the gold standard.Because money is the fruit of power and can be used for wielding or gaining more power, the one whoaccepts gold as legitimate money gives power to the people who own gold's stocks. Gold has been stable overthousands of years and has survived the test of time. All the other materials have become less important as gold hasproved itself the superior unit of account. Basically, price fluctuations of gold are not because the value of goldhas changed, but because the value of the currency has changed. The same happens with some other materials,like food or energy or transport or accommodation. A plate of food has always the same value, whatever its priceis. It is possible for privately issued money to be backed by any other material, although some people argue aboutperishables materials. After all, gold, or platinum, or silver, have in some regards less utility than previously (theirelectrical properties notwithstanding), while currency backed by energy (measured in joules) or by transport (measured inkilogramme*kilometre/hour) or by food [3](http://www.economist.com/markets/bigmac/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3503641 ) is also possible and may be acceptedby the people, if legalised. It is important to understand though that as long as money is above all an agreement to usesomething as a medium of exchange, its up to the community (or to the minority elite who hold the power and politiciansin their grip) to decide whether money should be backed by whatever material or should be totally virtual.Credit/Floating/Fiat MoneyFiat money refers to money that is not backed by reserves of another commodity. The money itself is givenvalue by government fiat (Latin for "let it be done") or decree, enforcing legal tender laws, previously knownas "forced tender", whereby debtors are legally relieved of the debt if they (offer to) pay it off in thegovernment's money. Note that the Government is controlled by the private Banking Dynasties who actuallycontrol the issue of fiat money. By law, the refusal of "legal tender" money in favor of some other form of payment isillegal, and has at times in history (Rome under Diocletian, and post-revolutionary France during the collapse of theassignats) invoked the death penalty.Governments and private bankers through history have often switched to forms of fiat money in times of need such aswar, sometimes by suspending the service they provided of exchanging their money for gold, and other times by simplyprinting the money that they needed. When governments produce money more rapidly than economic growth, the moneyThe Hidden History Of Money & New World Order Usury Secrets Revealed at last! Page 25