If your idea of You Tube rabbit holes involves animated histories of economists, then this should scratch that itch. An animated history of John Maynard Keynes from Alain de Botton.
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Just FYI, Keynes never said what he is famously credited as saying. At least, as far as we can tell he never said it.
I have been rolling a blog post around in my head discussing just how clueless most people are when it comes to the subject of money. I spent my entire life collecting coins and the last decade championing hard currency, only to be taken strange by my fellow hard-currency promoters when they all decided they wanted eSilver and eGold (don’t get me started on bitcoin) because it was easier to deal with than carrying hard money around with you.
I had a mini-history of the metallic monetary standards play out right before my eyes at that point. How do you know the gold and silver is there if you aren’t holding it in your hands? That exact instant, when the gold wasn’t in the owner’s hand when he spent it, was the birth of fractional reserve banking way back when, when people accepted that paper saying the gold existed was the same as having gold in their hands. Every bank run in history was caused by the gold not being where the paper said it was. I wasn’t going to sign up for that. I wasn’t going to give it all away, then, there for electronic promissory notes anymore than I had believed that a greenback was the same as a silver dollar when it comes to value. They are two completely different things.
There is a lot of writing that I’ve been squirreling away over the years on this subject. Here’s hoping I get the chance to put it all in order and publish it.
