Naked Money: A Revealing Look at Our Financial System

by Charles Wheelan

Overview

Charles Wheelan’s wonderfully whimsical, best-selling Naked series tackles the weird, surprisingly colorful world of money and banking.

Consider the $20 bill.

It has no more value, as a simple slip of paper, than Monopoly money. Yet even children recognize that tearing one into small pieces is an act of inconceivable stupidity. What makes a $20 bill actually worth twenty dollars? In the third volume of his best-selling Naked series, Charles Wheelan uses this seemingly simple question to open the door to the surprisingly colorful world of money and banking.

The search for an answer triggers countless other questions along the way: Why does paper money (“fiat currency” if you want to be fancy) even exist? And why do some nations, like Zimbabwe in the 1990s, print so much of it that it becomes more valuable as toilet paper than as currency? How do central banks use the power of money creation to stop financial crises? Why does most of Europe share a common currency, and why has that arrangement caused so much trouble? And will payment apps, bitcoin, or other new technologies render all of this moot?

In Naked Money, Wheelan tackles all of the above and more, showing us how our banking and monetary systems should work in ideal situations and revealing the havoc and suffering caused in real situations by inflation, deflation, illiquidity, and other monetary effects. Throughout, Wheelan’s uniquely bright-eyed, whimsical style brings levity and clarity to a subject often devoid of both. With illuminating stories from Argentina, Zimbabwe, North Korea, America, China, and elsewhere around the globe, Wheelan demystifies the curious world behind the paper in our wallets and the digits in our bank accounts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393353730
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/11/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	526,571
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Charles Wheelan is the author of the best-selling Naked Statistics and Naked Economics and is a former correspondent for the Economist. He teaches public policy at Dartmouth College and lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, with his family.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction xiii

Part I What it Is

1 What Is Money? 3

2 Inflation and Deflation 19

3 The Science, Art, Politics, and Psychology of Prices 40

4 Credit and Crashes 60

5 Central Banking 80

6 Exchange Rates and the Global Financial System 105

7 Gold 135

Part II Why it Matters

8 A Quick Tour of American Monetary History 155

9 1929 and 2008 181

10 Japan 210

11 The Euro 227

12 The United States and China 246

13 The Future of Money 263

14 Doing Central Banking Better 282

Notes 307

Index 331