MONEY What It Is How It Works

by William F Hummel


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Softcover
£14.99
£14.75
Softcover
£14.75

Book Details

Language : English
Publication Date : 06/05/2005

Format : Softcover
Dimensions : 6x9
Page Count : 164
ISBN : 9781420841664

About the Book

For several thousand years, money has been viewed as tokens with intrinsic value, like gold or silver coins.  Paper currencies were often used as substitutes, but they were only accepted on the promise they could be converted into “hard money” on demand. 

 

The era of hard money is now history.  Today every major industrial nation creates its own monetary base of intrinsically worthless and inconvertible tokens known as fiat money.  Most other forms of money are viable only to the extent they are convertible on demand into the government’s fiat money.

 

Many books deal with money in relation to financial institutions and markets, but say little or nothing about the imperatives in a fiat money system.  This book should help fill the void.  It consists of a collection of fifty-one short essays selected from those I wrote over a period of several years for my website at http://wfhummel.cnchost.com.  Thanks to Google and other search engines, the website has been discovered by many thousands around the world and is now visited by several hundred a day.


About the Author

My formal education was in science and engineering.  I graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in physics and earned a masters degree in electrical engineering from USC.  My entire professional career was in the field of guided missiles and spacecraft engineering.  I retired in 1990 as Chief Scientist of the Control System Laboratory at the Space and Communications Division of Hughes Aircraft Co.  During my forty years there, I was responsible for the design of flight control systems of several guided missiles, communication satellites, and science mission spacecraft, including the Surveyor which in 1966 was the first ever to soft land on the moon.

 

My interest in monetary systems and macroeconomics developed about ten years ago through internet discussion groups and e-mail exchanges with a number of economists.  Since then, much of my time has been spent in researching and analyzing the social institution we call money – primarily in its modern form.