HN Explorer

Resources to understand deeply how money works?

30 points by buttmuffin ↗ HN
what resources and methods would you recommend if someone wants to understand money , how it functions? don't want to understand it for the personal financial purposes but just for the sake of understanding.

25 comments

[ 1147 ms ] story [ 1493 ms ] thread
sylware
Are you sure you want to take that pill?
antasvara
In what way do you mean "how money works?" Do you mean it from a technical standpoint, like "how a bank transfers money?" Do you mean it in the "how things like the stock market work" sense? Do you mean it in the "how money is printed" sense?

Point being that "money" is a large set of topics. It would be helpful to narrow that down a little bit.

elisharobinson
There are no right answers.. My personal understanding is that any economic activity is directly proportional to energy spent and no of operations or movements... To explain with example.. Aws has many cloud services sql, ai, networking, etc... All of which can run on x86 arc.. All of x86 instruction set can be replaced as set of x86 MOV operations so only diff between different services is no of MOV instructions executed and how much energy it took to execute the operations... In conclusion you could say value = total no mov ops * energy consumed
pettycashstash2
There are great many books on finance. Start with basics and progress from there
tacostakohashi
I would recommend reading some books on economics, accounting, and finance.
jbreckmckye
To truly "understand" money is not just about economics, but political philosophy. What used to be termed "political economy".

At a very very high level you can think of money as a promise of labour. Having it allows society to cooperate asynchronously. But there are all manner of scenarios where promises break down.

afarrell
I have heard good things about David Graeber’s book “Debt: the first 5000 years.”
unmole
Please no. It might teach you about quaint cultural practices of remote tribes but it's completely useless for understanding how money works in the real world.
specialist
Anthropologist writes anthropology book about the anthropology of debt, currency, and money.

Graeber's great crime is debunking the myth that barter predates money. The historical and anthropological records show that debt precedes currencies. Further, known instances of barter emerge when a society's monetary system implodes. Academia and pundits should update their narratives accordingly.

Among many impact observations, the bits about debt crises stands out. Spoiler: recurring crises and debt forgiveness is the historical norm. Academia and pundits should update their narratives accordingly.

Graeber does not discuss finance, economics, accounting, monetary policy, etc. Because it's all out of scope. And outside of Graeber's fields of study.

unmole
> Anthropologist writes anthropology book about the anthropology of debt, currency, and money.

In which he misinterprets the history and ideas of mainstream economics, calls the safest securities on the planet a debt that will never be paid and spins bizarre conspiracy theories about the Iraq invasion.

> Graeber's great crime is debunking the myth that barter predates money.

This bullshit defense again. And the people who keep spouting this are happy to ignore what Graeber actually says about textbook descriptions of barter:

It's important to emphasize that this is not presented as something that actually happened, but as a purely imaginary exercise. To see that society benefits from a medium of exchange" write Begg, Fischer and Dornbuch (Economics, 2oos), "imagine a barter economy. " "Imagine the difficulty you would have today," write Maunder, Myers, Wall, and Miller (Economics Explairzed, 1991)...

Economics textbooks discuss barter as a thought experiment to hilight the utility of money. They don't care about the historical origins of money because they are out of scope and outside of field of study of economics. Graeber builds a nonsensical thesis based on the assumption that the whole of economics rests on this myth of barter.

> Graeber does not discuss finance, economics, accounting, monetary policy, etc.

Which makes Debt completely useless for someone like OP who is looking for Resources to understand deeply how money works.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
squillion
I completely agree that Graeber's barter myth "debunking" is bullshit. However, even as a thought experiment, the barter story was never very enlightening - actually more confusing than anything. It suggests that money is a commodity (salt, gold, cigarettes or whatever), while we know that's not the case. The gold standard is long gone and bank lending creates money. These facts are very hard to explain starting from barter.

I still recommend Graeber's book. If you already have a decent grasp of macroeconomics it can provide perspective and depth.

specialist
The anthropologists vs economists slap fight is at least decades old. (Barter and Economic Disintegration [1985]) So economists have had time to adjust.

Sure, Begg now knows it's a myth. But even he concedes the myth continues to do a lot of heavy lifting.

The criticism is that "mainstream economics" is wrong. Which is trivially verifiable. I found a handful of contemporary statements that barter precedes money in just a few minutes.

The point is such a minor part of Graeber's thesis. And yet it triggered pundits.

Getting fluffed up about nonissues serves to push serious consideration to the side. For all the usual reasons.

--

> ...spins bizarre conspiracy theories about the Iraq invasion.

What?

mudrockbestgirl
I'm assuming you mean that want to understand monetary policy, what makes money trustworthy/valuable, inflation, etc. Here are a few books that I thought were good, but I also wish I knew about a single better resource:

- The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson (This also has a documentary)

- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail by Ray Dalio (not directly about money but does a good job at explaining reserve currencies, types of currencies, debt cycles, inflation, all of which are related)

- What is Money, anyway? [0]

[0] https://www.lynalden.com/what-is-money/

unmole
Hands down, the Economics of Money and Banking course by Perry G Mherling is the best resource.
steve22209
What has Government Done to Our Money - Murray Rothbard.

Read it and you will understand money better than 99.9% of the population, including most economists.

imtringued
I can't find a summary of the contents but if I doesn't address liquidity preference, holding costs of different classes of assets, the fact that money abstracts over time and space and often is used to ignore the microscopic details of the real economy then I would say that someone like that has completely missed the point of money.

"Murray N. Rothbard's most famous essay on monetary theory.

Buffoonish and evil politicians, the banking cartel, the cabal that established the Federal Reserve, Lincoln's greenbacks, FDR's stealing of the gold, the Fed and the Great Depression, and so much more." is the only summary I have found so far and it doesn't it inspire confidence.

Edit:

"Fiat currency became the new star of the show. To Rothbard, the Fed is nothing more than a massive counterfeiting operation that forces Americans to pay ever-growing interest on money that continues to be worth less and less. In Rothbard’s opinion, the only way to stop this vicious cycle is “by the return to a free market commodity money such as gold, and by removing government totally from the monetary scene.”"

Yep, completely missing the point. A reintroduction of the gold standard isn't going to stop either inflation nor the "interest spiral" because the real return on deflating money is still positive as if there was a debt spiral. It also doesn't get rid of the inflation deflation volatility.

thoughtstheseus
Easy - Central Banking 101 by Joseph Wang. You’re welcome.
antman
Check this out: https://youtu.be/puIAG8ienB8 Economics of Money and Banking | Coursera I think it as basic and as deep as it gets and a great teacher Perry Mehrling
dev_0
Understanding money doesn't make you earn more money. Read Nassim Taleb
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
squillion
The problem with this topic is that it's highly contested. Be prepared for foundational and often ideological controversies. You know, a lot's at stake.

To get an idea of the mainstream and where the general mood is, I'd start from Wikipedia.

For bank money:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_money

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_circuit_theory

For central bank money (basically cash):

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_creation

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartalism

Note that both monetary circuit theory and chartalism are considered _heterodox_ economics. Yes, "regular" economics is called _orthodox_!

I personally think Modern Monetary Theory nails it. The MMT Podcast (http://themmtpodcast.com/) is accessible, entertaining, and non-dogmatic. A beautiful introductory book is "1000 Castaways: Fundamentals of Economics" by Clint Ballinger.

imtringued
Read Keynes' "general theory of employment interest and money" and Silvio Gesell's "natural economic order".

After that you will have to update your understanding of money to the modern system of deposits being created through debt which is a simple result of money being equivalent to accounting aka MMT. I recommend reading Wolfgang Stützel's "balance mechanics" just to get a basic understanding about global mathematical identities in accounting and dividing the economy into large sectors that interact with each other and "Money Syndrome" by Helmut Creutz.

If you are lazy and don't have time you can also watch the root bug videos on YouTube. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xkQn56Dtslk

markus_zhang
I think Fed reports and papers are both good sources. All major central banks and IMF publish numerous reports and papers every year.

Other than that, books about economic history e.g. how Gold Standard worked could also be interesting.