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.It s not tourists or banks looking to lapup their inventories.The currency markets today rise and fall on speculationpeople trading money to make money.The currency markets far and away eclipse the dollar amount tradedthrough any stock market.About $2 trillion per day of currencies is tradedaround the world.Every country s currency changes hands, is equated to newterms, is, in fact, born again.But if I gave Claudia a dollar, she d give me a dollar back.Nothing wouldchange day to day.That s the irony.Out there, in the world, things are differ-ent.Inside here, these walls, a dollar can only be traded for another dollar.It sworth that much, or that little, depending how you look at it what youperceive a dollar to mean. At the end of the day, it s all perception, says Jury. If I perceive a currencyto be going down in value, based on all the factors I just told you, then I d sellit.If I perceived that value to be increasing, then I d buy it. In Paulo Coehlo s novel The Alchemist1, a young man goes out into theworld to find someone who can make gold.He has the ingredients.He hasthe alchemy.The point of the book is that it s the young man s experience ofgoing out into the world that is the true alchemy.Out there, life is all one bigforeign exchange. 44 The Global Monetary Value SystemIt s what he perceives to be valuable that counts.Claudia Jury is pregnant when we first speak.A few months later, whenwe meet in New York, she isn t.Claudia had a boy.When babies are born, there is no concept of money.They lack theperception.That is something that is shaped and determined by society, byculture.Ultimately, it s the values of society that determine the value of a currency.Ultimately, it s societal values that shape us.Dialogue: Me and My Imagination zzzzzzz.hhh.zzzzzz. Wake up. I thought I was dead. Hardly. You don t need me. I do.You see, for all the logic that explains what comprises money, whatmakes a dollar a dollar, and how it can be manipulated up or down,there is conundrum of how this fits into the day-to-day workings ofour culture.You don t imagine, particularly, where the last dollar youare holding in your hand came from? You don t look at the date andimagine where that dollar s been? Sometimes I do. But not always.It s taken for granted.The dollars and coins become inci-dental emblems of value to us.You come in when those emblems areconnoted propositions. What I imagine you can do with that money. Right. But I m having less and less to work with.You barely use dollar bills any-more.I see your credit cards, and I have to take a couple of leaps toget to a shopping spree at Barneys, a vacation in the Mediterranean.Money in the abstract is much harder for me to relate to. It seems that we re dealing with perceptions again.What we perceivemoney to mean.What we perceive money to stand for. I m struggling with what stands for money these days.I have to imaginea great deal of that.I work very hard, you know. Yes, yes.I ve heard this complaint before. 45 WHAT MONEY REALLY MEANS Cybercash, what is that? A euro note, what is that? Platinum cards.Goldcards.Debit cards.Credit cards.And then there are the instanceswhen you just type in a number of some sort or say that number overthe phone.Voilà, you get stuff.You realize how many steps and whatI have to envision to get reason to wake up and take notice? Okay, okay.I get it. If I had a better sense of what these things are, it would be much eas-ier for you to put me to good use.As it stands, I m left trying to imag-ine things that aren t here, aren t there, aren t anywhere. They are perceived. You don t have to explain that to me; perception is where reason and Imeet all the time.It s like our café on the corner.Some ideas arekicked around and before you know it, logic steps in. So what are you angling for? It sounds as if you are angling for some-thing. I want a little tether to these abstract symbols of cash you are tradingwith these days.Maybe even a little help with what I ll have to dealwith in the future, if that s not asking too much. I thought you wanted to move on to the attachments of money.Youknow, the personal stories of what it s like to have money, what it slike not to have money.All that. Sure, that d be great.But if you re telling me, and I think that you aretelling me, that money, or the perception of money anyway, is chang-ing, then I d like to at least get a grip on that before we march on. You do realize that by doing this, you re giving reason more power. Not the way I see it.If I keep imagining things, reason and logic willalways overtake me; they ll be what you deem is right, and then I mleft out in the cold: Oh, that s just Imagination again, you know him.But if I can get a few prongs around the future of money, then I canfly, fly away and take you with me.Reason will be sitting there onsome old pile of cash, and you and I will be in cyberspace where onlyI rule. Uh, hum. We rule. Thank you.So what would you like to know? I d like to know about credit.I d like to know how value is created.I dlike to know how value is transferred.And I d like to know what theface of money will look like in the future. 46 The Global Monetary Value System Can you take me off the face of the dollar bill that is emblazoned in myhead now? Well, you asked. But that was a little frightening. So, let s wipe away all these misgivings and get on with it. Okay, to the future of money, then. 47 C H A P T E R 7The Future of Money as aCredit-Based Systemredit, says Nobel Prize winnerJoseph Stiglitz, is the currencyCof the future.It is what we lltrade with.Indeed, it is what we trade with and on.Stiglitz s point of view, to some, is deemed rather radical.For some, hisviews are easy targets of criticism because of the job Stiglitz formerly held:chairman of President Bill Clinton s Council of Economic Advisers.Whenever you are in or associated with the political realm, criticism is eas-ily launched.Saying that credit will be the currency, or is the currency, wetrade on doesn t exactly help matters, either.Because that s where Stiglitz sviews get controversial. You can be in Malaysia, and someone can determine your creditworthi-ness instantly, says Stiglitz. That s what money has become. The immediacy of information available through advances in technologymakes determining creditworthiness easy and accessible worldwide.So, whoneeds a dollar to represent that amount of credit? Who, indeed, needs even acredit card like a VISA, or any other form of representative value? Used to bethat anonymity forged the necessity of currency, credit cards, checks, or anyother form of numeraire even data.Now, of course, that has changed. You have a credit report, says Stiglitz. That shows people who you areand what your purchasing power is. A credit reports indicates your pattern of behavior when it comes to, essen-tially, trading
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