Money and Banking: What Everyone Should Know

What is money? Consider the fundamental nature of money as a social contract and a social institution that coordinates economic activity. Explore the connections between financial institutions and economic well-being, including the importance of "stable value money" to trade and the critical roles of healthy banks, efficient asset markets, and monetary policy.

Money developed as a medium of exchange to facilitate trade. Here, learn about five stages in the evolution of money. Beginning with barter, trace the rise of commodities as money, the invention of coins, paper money backed by precious metals, and finally our era's "fiat" money, which has value by agreement alone.

Study the invention of paper money in the history of goldsmiths issuing paper receipts backed by gold deposits. Then trace the important history of the gold standard, upon which nations pegged the value of currencies, and the reasons the gold standard was abandoned in 1971.

The U.S. government's role in financial affairs has been historically controversial. Learn about the two failed attempts in early U.S. history to establish a central bank, followed by the system of "national" banks chartered in the 1860s. Follow key issues surrounding national currency and coinage, leading to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

Finance is not just the business of the wealthy. Here, study nontraditional models for solving economic problems, from examples of local currencies galvanizing local economies to "microfinance" arrangements such as Bangladesh's Grameen Bank, which create highly successful savings and loan programs for the poor.

This lecture investigates the factors governing inflation, beginning with an inflation history of the United States over the last century. Learn about the correlation between inflation and the consumer price index, and how inflation is triggered by excess money growth. Also, review inflation's detrimental effects and costs.