money doesn't exist...
Out of context: Reply #12
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- TheBlueOne0
I think it all goes back to Isaac Newton when he took the nascent British Empire off the Sterling Standard and imposed the evil "gold standard":
http://www.umich.edu/~ece/studen…
e.g.: " In England, the standard of money had always been based on silver. However, with the introduction and subsequent widespread use of the Spanish guinea in the late seventeenth century, England was forced to assign a value to the gold coin. The chart to the left shows the worth of silver relative to gold in the early years of the eighteenth century. The Spanish took advantage of the conversion to import silver bullion and exchange it for gold. Under English law, precious metals could be exported in the form of bullion or foreign coin, but not in coins of the realm. However, the opportunity remained irresistible, and many “money jobbers” and “exchange dealers” melted the heaviest silver coins available to export to India and Japan. In 1712, Sir Isaac Newton declared, “gold in England is overvalued in proportion to silver ... and this excess value tends to increase the gold coins and diminish the silver coins of this kingdom.” However, Newton’s proposed remedies were ignored until 1717, when the guinea was revalued from 21s 6d to 21s. Still the measure did little to stifle the drain of English silver to foreign countries. It was a practice that was neither curtailed nor compensated for in the eighteenth century."
*this is posted in snark. money and it's valuation has always been invented and manipulated as circumstances allow. I can also go back to Nero debasing the Roman currency if you like. Although the medium has changed (and admittedly, thanks to technology, the sophistication and speed of said manipulation) the reasons and methods for such monetary chiccanery are as old as the admonitions against usury (charging interest on loans, thus creating "money from nothing") in Leviticus in the Old Testament four thousand odd years ago.