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Title: The History of Money by Jack Weatherford ISBN: 0-609-80172-4 Publisher: Three Rivers Press Pub. Date: 10 March, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.92 (12 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: a disappointment, entertaining but questionable
Comment: This book has many little interesting tid-bits of information and they are fun to read, but by the end of reading this book I wish I had read a more serious book.
One of my biggest issues with the book is there are too many statements, speculations and presentations of material in the book that are in contradiction to what most economists or historians in the field would present. This left me with a feeling after reading the book that I didn't know whether half of what I read what complete BS or worth believing. For instance the authors presentation of currency switching off the gold standard and speculating about the future of electronic money. By the last third of the book I found myself saying "give me a break, this is pure wild speculation" or "this is BS" or "I won't be believing this, I wish I was reading an author I could take seriously".
If you are curious what Jack Weatherford thinks about these topics, this book is fine. Or if you just want to be entertained and don't care if what you read is what experts believe, this book is fine. But if you want a serious presentation of what most economists and historians believe in the field I would not recommend this book.
Rating: 4
Summary: An Interesting Take on a Fascinating Topic
Comment: This is a pleasant essay - to call it a "history" is to give it more weight than it has - organized around the development of a truly transforming idea: money. And as innovations in money advanced those societies in which they arose, so this book must be a discussion of how money changed, and was changed by, the most "advanced" cultures of their time. Initially just the merchants needed something trans-national, and bars of raw gold and silver fit the bill. But it was the invention of coins, money that could be used by anyone, that started us down the path to the modern world, where all things - from pain and suffering to bushels of wheat - are commensurable in the one metric: money.
Jack Weatherford is an anthropologist, not an economist, so it is not surprising that he lingers over certain details that don't have a lot to do with his ostensible subject. Thus we are treated to the grisly spectacle of an Aztec human sacrifice, and how the Peruvian Indians who mine the silver that enriches others reconcile themselves to their poor and hazardous lives. Yet he does not stray far, and his depiction of the squeezing of the citizens of Rome for more and more taxes by successive emperors (plus their dilution of the currency) that led to the destruction of the free small-holding and business-owning classes, and with them the Empire, is chilling and instructive. The barbarians were kinder: they didn't use money.
The inventions of banking and of merchants' instruments (such as bills of exchange) are discussed, as well as the first national banks, in explaining the advent of paper money, the next great innovation. The pax Britannica is discussed, too, in a way: the British empire was not really as important, probably, as the British pound, backed by gold, and serving as a fixed monetary point, for a long period of world prosperity. For whatever logic inheres, or does not, to the "backing" of a currency by a precious metal, it did have the faith of many for a long time, and held currencies in rock-solid interrelationships for years.
Are things better now that all our currencies are floating, changing values relatively and absolutely every moment? Gold is a superstition, after all, so away with it! This book is at its best discussing the national hyperinflations that followed the Great War, the falling away from the gold standard, and the advent of the newer types of money and near-money. Electronic cash of various sorts, currency markets, and credit-card purchases that create private money are playing havoc with the traditional calculations of national money supply, and undermining the ability of governments to control their currency.
Where will it end? We'll have to surf this tidal wave of new money creation as long as we can without getting swamped: "The current electronic revolution in money promises to increase even more the role of money in our public and private lives, surpassing kinship, religion, occupation, and citizenship as the defining element of social life. We stand now at the dawn of the Age of Money." (p268)
Rating: 3
Summary: A Bit of a Flawed "History" But a Good Read
Comment: Jack Weatherford's "The History of Money" takes an interesting take on the development of money and man's evolving relationship its various forms. The book is a very good read for the lay person but it might prove a bit trying for those who are well versed in recent economic history.
Much of the information Weatherford presents is often misrepresented. One example of his misrepresentations is the US dollar has been in constant decline versus the price of gold starting from $35 an ounce in 1971 to $400 an ounce in 1995 and that gold has maintained its purchasing power. Not so. The price of gold peaked in January, 1980 at over $850 and has been in a deflationary trend along with other commodities for about fifteen years. Its early 2002 price is now about $280-290 an ounce. In the late 1930's, an American could buy a very nice mid-size car for about twenty ounces of gold or about $700.00. Even in 1995 using the $400 price, you could barely buy the cheapest new car on the market for the same weight in gold. Weatherford bemoans Nixon's actions to cut the dollar's final link with the dollar as inflationary despite the fact that it was inflation of the late 1960's and the gold drain from the treasury to other foriegn governments that would force the break in the first place. Other problems involve the supposive large declines in prices in the 19th century, with the starting points always during periods of war and high prices and the belief that the state (wildcat) banking period was really more stable than history says, which leads one to wonder what happened during the banking panics of 1819, 1837, and 1857?
Some information Weatherford presents is just wrong. For example, he states that in 1934, Roosevelt and the Congress a passed a law nationalizing silver in the manner similar to gold and as a result slowly debased or replaced the silver coinage with base coins which the result that by 1963 when the law was repealed 3.2 billion ounces was stockpiled by the government. Not quite. A proclamation by Roosevelt on August 9, 1934 (not the Silver Purchase Act of June 18, 1934 which required the government to purchase large amounts of silver from both foreign and domestic sources in order to support its price, that was the law repealed in 1963) did nationalize silver bullion but with the understanding that it would be used for coining. The intent was not to remove silver from circulation and create a reserve like gold was. In fact, the mintage of silver coinage except for silver dollars was greatly increased and the only reason that silver dollars were not minted in greater numbers was because people did not like using them and the treasury already had $500 million of them sitting unused in its vaults backing silver certificates. Unlike gold certificates which were no longer convertible to gold coin, silver certificates would remain fully convertible to silver dollars (the vast majority were minted before 1928, none after 1935) until 1963, then silver bullion until 1968. There was no gradual debasement of U.S. silver coins between 1934 and 1963. Until the Coinage Act of July 23, 1965 removed silver from dimes and quarters and reduced it in half-dollars (the rest was eliminated in 1971), the silver content in these coins remained constant from 1873 to 1964. By the way, the last vestiges of the nationalization of silver ended August 21, 1967 when silver began unrestricted trading as a normal commodity.
Other mistakes range from minor (the Bretton Woods Agreements were signed in July 22, 1944 not 1946 and the conference was held at the Mount Washington Hotel at the base of Mount Washington not Mount Deception as he wished the agreement to be named), to major (the banking and saving and loan disasters of the 1980's and early '90s were not caused by the great increase in housing prices in the postwar era but a combination of overlending to the oil and gas and the commerical real estate sectors during their respective booms then busts plus some good old-fashion banking fraud).
If Weatherford's history is shaky at times, his insight on the social aspects of money makes up for it. His observations on primitive money and its overall development through history are quite excellent as are more contemporary observations on the rich/middle class and the poor use money and the penalities the poor must endure in order perform necessary transactions. He also makes some observations about where money and society may be headed that one may or may not agree on but does make one stop and think a bit.
If you are looking for a good book on money as history, there are better volumes out there but if you interested in money as anthropology, this book will give you an good insight into that realm.
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Title: Money: A History by Jonathan Williams, Joe Cribb, Elizabeth Errington ISBN: 0312212127 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: A History of Money: From Ancient Times to the Present Day by Glyn Davies ISBN: 0708317170 Publisher: University of Wales Press Pub. Date: November, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Social Meaning of Money : Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies by Viviana Zelizer ISBN: 0691048215 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 04 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History by Milton Friedman ISBN: 015661930X Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: March, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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