Sunday, October 19, 2008

Money is a religion or belief system

All paper currencies worldwide have no intrinsic value. In other words without people believing that all the different currencies had value they would not have any value or even use at all. Money is only useful if you and everyone who uses it believes it is.

If you study how money came about it was for example from say someone farming. They worked and toiled for a season to bring their crop to market but then they needed a way to carry something that represented their crop back home that they could buy something else with so people slowly invented Gold Coins with their ruler or emporer stamped on it. This way each kingdom, nation or culture had its own coinage. But then people wanted to have wealth when they moved from kingdom to kingdom or nation to nation so they developed different values between nations and cultures of their coinage.

Finally, the United States got tired of having Gold or silver backing up our paper money in the 20th century and decided to float money based upon the Gross Domestic Product of the whole country. This means that all the goods and services provided within the United States and to the rest of the world is backing the paper money of the United States. Many other countries decided to use this system as well.

However, when Globalization began in earnest during the 1990s and 2000s these systems of beliefs within systems of beliefs within systems of beliefs started to become so unwieldy that almost everyone knew the world was in for it because there just became to many variables and no one policing body to make it all work.

So, this fall, it finally all fell apart and very likely millions of people worldwide will starve to death or worse because of this falling apart of the world economic system.

We need three things for it all to work.

First, we need a new system that is fair to everyone on earth. I don't know if this is going to happen but it is what we all need

Second, it might help if there were a world currency that behaved something like the Euro does now in that it is used freely in about 20 or more nations in Europe as their national currency.

Third, Credit default swaps either need to be universally outlawed or they need to be regulated. Banks or rich groups of individuals should not be able to make insurance bets that they don't have enough money to cover.(at the very least).

Though there are many more things that need to happen worldwide, these three things must happen to prevent the same thing happening 20 to 50 years from now the same way or slightly different than it did this time.

Also, it makes me wonder whether what happened to the world economy is a new form of international warfare or intercorporate warfare or interrich warfare. I think this last premise must be investigated by all nations and all news entities worldwide. If this is not done I sense it will cost millions more lives and millions more bankruptcies and more chaos in the money markets and banks worldwide for decades to come!!!

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