The Fortunes of money
The Fortunes of money
The need for a form of money to serve as a medium of exchange arose at a very early stage in history, and ever since then an astonishing range of objects has been used for the purpose at different times and places-feathers, shells, cocoa beans, silver, gold, and paper notes, to name but a few. As time went by, the functions of money diversified. A medium of payment for goods and services, a standard of value and a store of purchasing power, it eventually became a convention reflecting people's confidence in society.
The subject of money is full of mystery and paradox. It creates, as Lucien Gillard points out in this issue, "a coherent area within which people have a common yardstick with which to assess their credits and debts". Within this area its use gives rise to inequalities. It is a measure of wealth and, by the same token, of poverty. It became an attribute of state power, but also, through fraud, a means whereby the power of the state was contested. Although a currency is legal tender within fixed boundaries, it is linked by exchange rates to other currency areas and international markets.
Often attacked by moralists and rejected by Utopians, sometimes relegated to a secondary role even by economists but omnipresent in our daily lives, money has contributed, by facilitating trade and boosting economic activity, to certain decisive steps in the history of civilization. In this issue we evoke some milestones in monetary history in the hope that they will help to throw some light on the role of money in the world today