The Money Plot

A History of Currency's Power to Enchant, Control, and Manipulate

De: Frederick Kaufman

Narrado por: Malcolm Hillgartner

Half fable, half manifesto, this brilliant new take on the ancient concept of cash lays bare its unparalleled capacity to empower and enthrall us.

Frederick Kaufman tackles the complex history of money, beginning with the earliest myths and wrapping up with Wall Street’s byzantine present-day doings. Along the way, he exposes a set of allegorical plots, stock characters, and stereotypical metaphors that have long been linked with money and commercial culture, from Melanesian trading rituals to the dogma of Medieval churchmen faced with global commerce, the rationales of Mercantilism and colonial expansion, and the U.S. dollar’s 1971 unpinning from gold.

The Money Plot offers a tool to see through the haze of modern banking and finance, demonstrating that the standard reasons given for economic inequality - the Neoliberal gospel of market forces - are, like dollars, euros, and yuan, contingent upon structures people have designed. It shines a light on the one percent’s efforts to contain a money culture that benefits them within boundaries they themselves are increasingly setting. And Kaufman warns that if we cannot recognize what is going on, we run the risk of becoming pawns and shells ourselves, of becoming other people’s money.

©2020 by Frederick Kaufman. Billie Eilish epigraph from “everything I wanted”, by Billie Eilish O’Connell and Finneas Baird O’Connell. Lyrics © 2019 by Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd, Universal Music Publishing Group. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Fascinating…Kaufman has a sharp eye for colorful anecdotes and a witty and incisive prose style. The result is an appealing compendium of musings and money-related minutiae.” --Publishers Weekly

“In this unusual and original book, Frederick Kaufman tells the history of money in its double guise as a medium of exchange and a symbol of value. In its first form it strives for fixity, but as a symbol of our fluctuating hopes, fears, and desires, fixity perpetually eludes it. Being a measure of our freedom to dream, money can never be given a fixed value in a free society. Required bedtime reading for central bank governors tasked with ‘controlling the money supply.’” --Robert Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at Warwick University and coauthor of How Much Is Enough?

“Fascinating. An irreverent, grand, and captivating history tour of money: what it is and what it does to each and all of us.” --George Papaconstantinou, former finance minister of Greece and author of Game Over: The Inside Story of the Greek Crisis

Awesome

Openned my eyes to an entirely new way of thinking about "money" that is apparently only new to me.

Terrible book about money

The premise is that money is a myth and a story. Fine. But then the author goes on telling stories with or without connection to money. At the end you wonder what the book is about. Sorry to be so harsh but I was totally confused.