Consider the $20 bill.
It has no more value, as a simple slip of paper, than Monopoly money. Yet even children recognize that tearing one into small pieces is an act of inconceivable stupidity. What makes a $20 bill actually worth twenty dollars? In “Naked Money,” the third volume of his best-selling Naked series, Charles Wheelan uses this seemingly simple question to open the door to the surprisingly colorful world of money and banking.
The search for an answer triggers other questions along the way: Why does paper money (“fiat currency” if you want to be fancy) even exist? And why do some nations, like Zimbabwe in the 1990s, print so much of it that it becomes more valuable as toilet paper than as currency? How do central banks use the power of money creation to stop financial crises? Why does most of Europe share a common currency, and why has that arrangement caused so much trouble? And will payment apps, bitcoin, or other new technologies render all of this moot?
In “Naked Money,” Wheelan shows us how our banking and monetary systems should work in ideal situations and reveals the havoc and suffering caused in real situations by inflation, deflation, illiquidity, and other monetary effects. With illuminating stories from Argentina, Zimbabwe, North Korea, America, China, and elsewhere around the globe, Wheelan demystifies the curious world behind the paper in our wallets and the digits in our bank accounts.
Charles Wheelan is the author of the best-sellers “Naked Statistics” and “Naked Economics” and is a former correspondent for The Economist. Wheelan is a senior lecturer and policy fellow at the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College, where teaches public policy and economics. From 2004 to 2012, Wheelan was a senior lecturer in public policy at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. He is author of “The Centrist Manifesto” and founder of The Centrist Project. He lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, with his family.
