by David Wolman
Japan
National Printing Bureau
paper money in
Jefferson, Thomas
Jefferson, William
Jevons, William Stanley
Jewelry
Jurkowsky, Tom
Kamehameha (King)
Kazakhstan
Kennedy, Ted
Kenya
Keynes, John Maynard
Kilowatt Cards
Kim Jong Ill
King, Martin Luther
King, Mervyn
King Lear (Shakespeare)
Kipling, Rudyard
Króna currency
Krugman, Paul
Kublai Khan
Kuhl, Hans-Jürgen
Kumar, Sonu
Kunkel, Peter E.
Kwacha currency
Las Vegas
Latin America
Latvia
Law enforcement. See also Police
Leapfrog scenario
Learning Channel
Legal Tender
Lens array
Libertarians
Liberty Dollar
discounts for
Move Up mechanism for
Liberty Services
Liliuokalani (Queen)
Liquid assets
Loans
Locke, John
Longshot magazine
Lott, Trent
Lydia (Greek kingdom)
McDonald’s
Madoff, Bernie
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mann, Ronald
Manta currency
Mark of the Beast
Mark Twain
Mas, Ignacio
Massachusetts Bay Colony
MasterCard
Media
Mercy Corp
Metals, prices of
Mexico
Microchips
Migrant laborers
Military Review
Millennium Prize Problems
Minority Report (film)
Mint.com
Monetary sovereignty
Money
creation of
definition of
vs. equity
faith in value of(see also Currencies; confidence in)
and feces
functions of
hoarding
language of
minting
mobile money (see also Cellphones: used for money transactions)
money clips
money illusion
money supply
new ideas about
origin of
and religion
as representing pure interaction
and states/governments
various objects as
See also Cash; Coins; Currencies; Digital money; Electronic money; Paper money; Saving(s)
Money Illusion, The (Fisher)
Money laundering
M-Pesa service
Mundell, Robert
Musulin, Toni
Napoleonic Wars
Natural disasters
Nazism
Netherlands
New Jersey Transit train
Newton, Sir Isaac
New Yorker, The
New York Times
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Nickel
Nigeria
Nixon, Richard
Non-native’s Tipping Anxiety
NORFED
North Korea
Norway
Nuclear weapons
Numismatists/notaphilists
Obama, Barack
Oil prices
Onion, The
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
Oyster cards
Pain
Panama
Paper money
burning
constitutionality of
as contaminated
high-denomination banknotes
and history/identity of issuing country
inks used for
legacy features of U.S. paper money
manufacturing
$1 bills
$100 bills
origin of
plastic banknotes
printing
redeem-ability of
redesign/reissue of
security features for (see also Security issues)
in seventeenth century Europe
size of
stashing
varieties of
See also Cash; Dollar currency
Papua New Guinea
Paul, Ron
Pawn Stars (reality show)
Payday lenders
Payment technologies
and small-value transactions
See also Cellphones: used for money transactions; Credit cards; PayPal
PayPal
Pearl Harbor Survivors Association
Peer-to-peer transactions
Pennies
Peru
Peso currency
Pew Research Center
Philippines Central Bank
Philosophy of Money, The (Simmel)
Placebo effect
Plasectomy
Platinum
Poland
Police
Polo, Marco
Ponzi schemes
Portugal
Pound sterling currency
Poverty. See also under Cash
Power grid
Precious metals. See also Gold; Platinum; Silver
Presley, Telle
Prices. See also Inflation
Priming (psychological)
Privacy issues
Progressives (political)
Promissory notes
Prostitution
P versus NP problem
Pyramid schemes
Quicken software
Raghubir, Priya
Ramsey, Dave
Rapture
Regulations
Rejection, feelings of
Religion. See also Bible Mark of the Beast
Remittances
Reserve Bank of Australia
Retailers
Revolutionary War
Right (political)
Robberies. See also Banks: bank robberies
Romania
Roosevelt, Franklin
Rosicrucians R
oyal Charm (undercover investigation)
Royal Hawaiian Mint Company
Rupee currency
Rushkoff, Douglas
Russia
São Tomé and Príncipe
Saraswati, Niranjanananda
SARS virus
Satan. See also Mark of the Beast
Saving(s)
Scandinavia. See also individual countries
Schmidt, Eric
Science journal
Scotland
SDR. See Special Drawing Rights
Secret Service
Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (Greider)
Securency printing firm in Australia
Security issues. See also Paper money: security issues for
Seigniorage
Serios
Shanghai
Sharma, Lakhnlal
Shegenov, Gaziz
Siberia
Sigurdsson, Jón
Silver
silver $1 American Eagle
silver quarters
See also Gold: gold/silver bugs; Liberty Dollar
Simmel, Georg
Singapore
Single Global Currency Association
Sinha, Abhishek
6D Technologies
Slavery
Smart banknotes
Smartcards
Smartphones. See also Cellphones
Smith, Adam
Smith, Richard
Smoking Dragon (undercover investigation)
SMS messages
Smugglers
<
br /> Snipes, Wesley
Social networking
Somaliland
South Korea
Spain
Spanish Empire
Special Drawing Rights (SDR)
Specializations
Squibb, Stephen
Stability. See also under Currencies
Staphylococcus bacteria
State Bank of India
Stealing
Steil, Benn
Steps Toward the Mark of the Beast (Guest)
Stock exchanges
Sulfur dioxide
Sunshine Minting
Superfluid
Supernotes
Supreme Court
Swapping
Sweden
Swine flu
Switzerland
Swiss francs
Taiwan Central Bank
Taliban
Taxation
stealth taxes
tax evasion/noncompliance
Taxi drivers
Tea Party Dollars
Telecom companies
Tenge currency
Terra TRC
Terrorism
Text alerts
Thailand
Thiel, Peter
Thorkelsdottir, Kristin
Tipping
Todd, Walker
Trade
expansion of
Trust. See also Currencies: confidence in
Tucholsky, Kurt
Turkey
Ueda, Kenji
“UK’s Payment Revolution, The” (report)
Ulvaeus, Bjorn
Unemployment
United Arab Emirates
United Nations
United States
Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP)
Congress
Department of Justice and Drug Enforcement Agency
gold owned by
House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare
Justice Department
Pentagon
State Department
Supreme Court
Title 18 of U.S. Code
U.S. Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
U.S. Mint
U.S. Treasury
See also FBI; Federal Reserve; Secret Service
Uruguay
USA Today/Gallup Poll
Usury
Utah
Ven currency
Vietnam
Vietnam War
Viruses. See Flu virus
VISA
Vodafone
Von NotHaus, Bernard
conviction of
and Ron Paul
trial/indictment of
Wages
Wall Street Journal
Wampum
Wang, Yang
Warren, Elizabeth
Wars. See also individual wars
Washington, George
Water consumption
Watermarks
Weber, Wesley
Weimar Republic
Weschler, Lawrence
Western Union
“What’s a Penny (or a Nickel) Really Worth?”
Whistleblowers
White, Chris
White Plague, The (Herbert)
Wikileaks
Williams, Art
Wired
Won currency
World Bank
World economy
World of Warcraft
World War I
World War II
Wuffie Bank
Yap (island)
Yen currency
YouTube
Yuan currency
Zazula, Tony
Zimbabwe
Zinc
a One hypothesis about the Guidestones is that they were commissioned by a group of Rosicrucians, a mysterious cult-cum-religion with medieval roots and links to Protestantism.
b Using a banknote as a tissue: an inflation hawk’s publicity stunt, perhaps?
c U.S. paper money is made at two facilities, one in Washington, D.C., and the other in Fort Worth, Texas.
d What we should be sweating instead is deflation. Economists generally regard inflation’s fraternal twin as more damaging and much harder to remedy. When prices go down, money in pockets becomes more valuable, which means it stays put, like hoarded gold, leading the economy to a precarious standstill. Business owners, consumers, investors—no one lends, spends, or hires.
e A few years earlier, another cash depot, this one in Britain, was hit for more than £53 million ($92.5 million) after the depot manager was abducted and his wife and son held hostage.
f These are 2001 figures, which, unfortunately, is the last time the tax gap was measured.
g For the record, Singapore’s rarely used 10,000-dollar bill, worth about $7,700 in 2011, is the world’s highest value note, followed by Switzerland’s 1,000-franc, which is worth about $1,100.
h Another theory holds that supernotes are made and used by the CIA. There are irregularities in the North Korea story, one being that if your goal is really to sabotage the U.S. economy, you should flood the market with $10s and $20s—notes that people actually use—instead of $100s, which get stored or shipped overseas. But to date this theory has few proponents.
i Not that a nationwide halt to borrowing and buying more stuff would necessarily cure our financial woes; if only it were that straightforward. Because the U.S. consumer accounts for about a fifth of all global economic activity, a sudden cure to our debt addiction could have tectonic effects on the global economy, which might damage our financial situation much more than our prodigal ways.
j Perhaps policymakers in countries like Thailand ought to rejigger their cash denominations to capitalize on this aspect of our irrational selves, so as to boost visiting foreigners’ willingness to spend.
k Longtime New Yorkers may recall the case from 1987 about a homeless woman who was institutionalized for, among other things, running into traffic and “tearing up money and urinating on it.”
l As the writer Stephen Squibb put it in August 2011, just before President Obama signed the now-famously-feeble debt deal: “Considered against the great encyclopedia of human promises, no religious gospel nor philosophical ideal, no scientific theory nor legal precedent, no testimony of love nor vow of hatred has ever been so widely or deeply believed as the full faith and credit of the United States Government today.” (http://nplusonemag.com/origins-of-the-crisis)
m Investment guru Warren Buffett famously observed that gold “gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”
n The “888.421.6181” and “NORFED.ORG” on the coins reduces that aura of the bona fide.
o In Honolulu, I asked about this episode at the sandwich shop, and whether he was disingenuously representing the Liberty Dollar as government-issued money. After recounting precisely how the Learning Channel opportunity came about, and how serendipitous it was that he was to be in Washington, D.C., the same day as the production crew, von NotHaus said he didn’t remember what he said when buying the three sandwiches. But when transacting in Liberty Dollars, he says, you don’t want to deliver the whole spiel. “The waiter doesn’t want to hear it, nor do the people waiting in line behind you!”
p In an e-mailed newsletter to “supporters” (and curious reporters), von NotHaus says Paul’s office contacted him back in 1999. The two men had an unsatisfactory meeting, he says, although since then, according to von NotHaus they have dined among the same company on three different occasions. You can also find a picture online of Paul, looking less than thrilled, standing next to von NotHaus, who is dressed in Revolutionary War–era garb, pointing a sword at the camera.
q When investment giant Bear Stearns went under and thousands of Wall Street traders were sent packing, just-fired emplo
yees walked out onto the streets of Manhattan and were shocked to see all the people strolling and shopping—simply going about their daily lives as if they had no clue of the catastrophe underway. (“Wall Street Vérité,” The New Yorker, October 11, 2010)
r One measure of the phone’s potential impact is how intensely the poor spend on communication technologies. According to one recent study, those who manage to increase their income from a dismal $1 a day to a mere $4 a day start spending on cellphones over needs such as health, housing, and education. A purebred cynic could argue that the poor are buying something because of slick advertising, not out of necessity, and I’m sure marketing matters. But that conclusion underestimates the wherewithal of people who have become expert survivors. If the poor are buying hundreds of millions of cellphones, surely it’s not because they’ve all been tricked.
s The anthropologists had received permission from people in advance to track how they used M-Pesa and then interview them later.
t Even the pseudo-country of Somaliland is in the running. At the moment, $1 there is currently worth a toaster-size pile of 17,000 Somaliland shillings. That absurdity is why local entrepreneurs launched a mobile money service to facilitate incoming remittances (denominated in dollars) that attracted 80,000 customers in the first six months.
u Savings denominated in sovereign currency are guaranteed. Savings denominated in alternative currencies—if banks were to offer them—may not have that level of protection. That’s another edge that government-issued currencies have, at least for now, over Ven, Ithaca HOURs, Bitcoin, and the like.
v The billions in U.S. cash floating about Iraq equals about 20 percent of that country’s GDP.
w Fifty- and 100-dollar bills last longer, between fifty-five and eighty-nine months, because—wait for it—people stash them!
Copyright © 2012 by David Wolman
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