THE BARBARIC METAL The history and evolution of money; the emergence of gold as the universal money supply; the attempts by governments to cheat their subjects by clipping or debasing gold coins; the reality that any quantity of gold will suffice for a monetary system and that "more money" does not require more gold.
There is a great mystique surrounding the nature of money. It is generally regarded as beyond the understanding of mere mortals. Questions of the origin of money or the mechanism of its creation are seldom matters of public debate. We accept them as facts of life which are beyond our sphere of control. Thus, in a nation which is founded on the principle of government by the people, and which assumes a high level of understanding among the electorate, the people themselves have blocked out one of the most important factors affecting, not only their government, but their personal lives as well. This attitude is not accidental, nor was it always so. There was a time in the fairly recent past when the humble voter—even without formal education—was well informed on money matters and vitally concerned about their political implementation. In fact, as we shall see in a later chapter, major elections were won or lost depending on how candidates stood on the issue of a central bank. It has been in the interest of the money mandarins, however, to convince the public that, now, these issues are too complicated for novices. Through the use of technical jargon and by hiding simple reality inside a maze of bewildering procedures, they have caused an understanding of the nature of money to fade from the public consciousness. WHAT IS MONEY?
The first step in this maneuver was to scramble the definition of money itself. For example, the July 20, 1975 issue of the New York