The War and Our Financial Fabric

Treatises innumerable have been written about money. Famous and non-famous political economists have attempted a definition of money. These definitions have been divergent, and often irreconcilable. Political economists have found it no easier to arrive at a simple, understandable, explicit formula than literary critics have found it to define poetry. All of us have a vague idea of what money is, but it is so vague that it is well-nigh impossible to present it in a concise and precise phrase.

This amazes the man in the street, who believes that nothing is so simple, nothing so easily conceivable as money. To him, of course, money consists of so many pounds, shillings, and pence, and when that is said, all is said. What more is there to explain and define? He is wealthy or poor, comfortable or miserable, according to the quantity of pounds, shillings, and pence he possesses. He knows that he can satisfy his needs, his desires, his cravings if he has enough money with which to buy what he wants, but if he has insufficient his needs and longings will not be gratified.