Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing

On the heels of my struggles with retirement accounts, I decided that a little more financial literacy wouldn't hurt me. But history is a lot more interesting than finance, so I decided to find a history book. Luckily for me, a co-host of a podcast that I occasionally listen to (Planet Money by NPR) published a book on the subject just a couple years ago. Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein, perfectly slots into the category of informative books that are easy to read and informative (for example, see Humble Pi). 

I've never thought too deeply about the origins of money and the modern financial system. Even personal finance is a weak point for me. However this work covered the most important ideas, with quite a bit of focus on the systems leading to the creation of banks, currencies, and stocks. I'd known the some background ideas - that individual lenders initially would give their own "banknotes", that the Dutch East India Company helped pave the way to shareholders, that there was something called "the gold standard". But it was all vague. And as for the gold standard, in my head it was basically just a conversion rate from dollars to gold. Goldstein does a great job of explaining these complex concepts. 

Due to the recent publication date, contemporary topics, including those directly affecting daily life to this day, are discussed near the end. This includes the 2008 financial crash and development of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. In fact, the last may have been one of the most eye-opening parts for me. Given frequency with which cryptocurrencies are discussed in media and the news, I thought that I had a pretty solid grasp on its history. However, they date back much farther than I thought, and took an even more convoluted path than I knew.

I'm still far from being a financial guru. I don't even know if I will retain half the knowledge that this book has to offer (probably not, but here's to hoping). But I definitely now know a lot more than I had before and enjoyed the process. Also, I did learn the most important idea - money is trust, nothing more. Lose the trust and money stops existing.