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单词 money
释义
money

Philosophy
  • A monetary system requires first an abstract scale in which the value of different goods and services can be measured and compared, and secondly a transferable system of tallying or tracking credits for those supplying goods and services, and corresponding debts incurred by those consuming them. The essence of money does not therefore lie in gold, coinage, notes, or any other physical tokens themselves, but in what these things signify, which is the amount of these credits and debts. Thus in order to accept a simple bilateral IOU, a provider of goods or services must suppose that the buyer is trustworthy, and so can and will pay on demand, or according to an agreed schedule. But the seller may suppose instead, or in addition, that the IOU will itself be acceptable as credit by other people. In other words, the token and what it represents may be expected to be indefinitely transferable for a variety of goods and services at least within some circle of potential traders. Insofar as this is true, an IOU becomes liquid, that is, widely exchangeable, or in short a sum of money. The most liquid asset is a token of credit with the state or sovereign bank—commonly known as cash. The interest an institution pays on a security or a deposit can in effect be seen as a compensation for loss of liquidity, or equivalently the interest a borrower pays is the price of the credit that has been afforded by the lender.

    Like other systems of mutual coordination a monetary system can arise more or less spontaneously (see convention). It is always as robust, or fragile, as the trust people feel able to put in its tokens of credit, and this is the question of whether they suppose, and suppose that others suppose, that the debts offsetting that credit are collectable. In a period of inflation (sometimes engineered by governments, sometimes not) money is devalued, which, as Adam Smith said has ‘always proved favourable to the debtor, and ruinous to the creditor’. A run on a bank is the result of a feedback loop whereby a suspicion that a bank’s own statement of credit cannot be made liquid grows and multiplies, thereby becoming self-justifying.


Economics
  • 1. A medium of exchange and store of value. This may consist of physical objects, that is, notes and coin; or of book or computer entries, that is, bank deposits. Money was originally a physical substance such as gold or silver, which was valued for its own sake before it came to be used as coinage. Coins and notes are now usually tokens, whose intrinsic value is below their face value.

    2. A verbal shorthand for ‘monetary policy’. Thus cheap money means that loans are cheap and easily available; tight money or dear money means that loans are expensive and hard to obtain.

    3. An expression for wealth in general.


World History
  • A medium of exchange allowing goods and services to be valued in terms of a legal tender consisting of objects with a high intrinsic value (gold) or a token value (banknotes), rather than traded directly as would occur in a barter economy. Coins of fixed values issued by a government first appeared in the 8th century bc both in Lydia, in Asia Minor, and in China. Britain’s first coins, of silver and copper, appeared in the 1st century bc. Thereafter until recently most coins have been made of gold and silver, with copper and bronze used for coins of low value. Token money (such as banknotes) has an intrinsic value less than its face value. Banknotes were first issued by banks who undertook to pay the sum of money that appeared on the note from their deposits of gold. The Bank of England issued notes from its foundation in 1694 and banknotes are now the principal form of money in circulation.


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