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Throughout the ages physical money in the form of objects, coins and notes has increasingly been replaced by more abstract means of payment such as bills of exchange, cheques and credit cards. This book shows that in the years to come that trend to virtual money will continue apace.
Today's financial system is seen by the most as having a fixed size. Bernard A. Litaer challenges this perspective by showing that there were different economic systems in history and that our present system has arisen from a tacit and problematic collective acceptance. He sees the future in the development of complementary currencies. He explains which money is necessary for which needs and how we can commonly create it. Money only exists because of trust -- where trust has been destroyed, money is loosing its value; chaos and poverty are sad consequences. Lietaer has written an exciting and informative book for anyone who is aware of economic problems, from interested laymen to bankers. Das Geld- und Finanzsystem, wie wir es heute kennen, wird von den meisten als feste Grosse, ja als gottgegeben betrachtet. Bernard A. Lietaer zeigt dagegen, dass es im Laufe der Geschichte ganz andere Systeme gegeben hat und unsere derzeitige Finanzordnung einer stillschweigenden -- inzwischen hochst problematischen -- kollektiven Ubereinkunft entspringt. Die Zukunft sieht er in der Entwicklung von komplementaren Wahrungen. Er erlautert, welches Geld wir fur welche Aufgabe benotigen und wie wir es gemeinsam erschaffen konnen. Denn Geld besteht nur aufgrund von Vertrauen. Wo dieses Vertrauen zerstort wird, verliert Geld seinen Wert; Chaos und Armut sind die traurigen Folgen. Lietaer hat ein ebenso spannendes wie informatives "Enthullungsbuch" geschrieben, das sich vom interessierten Laien uberneugierige Banker an alle wendet, die sich der Geldproblematik bewusst sind.
New technologies are shaking the foundations of traditional finance. Leading economist Eswar Prasad foresees the end of cash, as central banks develop their own digital currencies to compete with Bitcoin and Facebook's Diem. Money and finance are on the verge of dramatic transformations that will reshape their roles in the lives of ordinary people.
This book is a thoughtful, amply documented reflection on the future of currency. The dollar, euro and yen dominate the global monetary order, with the dollar now unrivaled at the top and unlikely to be threatened in the future. The countries that issue lesser currencies face a trade-off between monetary sovereignty and international acceptability (with all its economic advantages). Some economists say these lesser currencies should simply dollarize, that is, sacrifice their monetary sovereignty on the altar of international economic efficiency by adopting a stronger currency as their own. Author Benjamin J. Cohen argues that these countries are likely to reject dollarization because the emotional and political advantages of issuing one's own currency are simply too strong. He suggests various alternate mechanisms that allow countries to maintain some monetary independence and authority while gaining the advantages of a fully liquid, widely used currency. Non-specialists may find his extensive discussions a bit dry or sometimes tedious, but getAbstract.com applauds the author's ability to explore monetary economics in admirably lucid detail.
Part of The Elgar Series on Central Banking and Monetary Policy, this book explores the relationship between central banking, monetary policy and the economy at large, focusing on the specific relationship between central banking, monetary policy and the future of money.
Bitcoin first appeared in 2009, and it's already challenging everything we've come to accept about money, financial institutions, and even government. The digital currency can be nearly anonymous. And it can be traded internationally—without the fees, government regulation, and bank oversight of paper money. But Bitcoin is still risky. Its value fluctuates wildly. More than $400 billion of it disappeared overnight with the fall of a single trading exchange. How is that possible? And why is it so popular? CNNMoney reporter Jose Pagliery explains it all. He details the digital currency's mysterious origins. He explores the dark side of Bitcoin: a world of drugs and assassins for hire. And he examines the economic impact of this revolutionary concept through interviews with pensive economists, wary bank regulators, and free market proponents such as Ron Paul. Bitcoin: And the Future of Money explains how it works and why it matters. The book is essential reading for anyone looking to understand a financial innovation that will forever change how we think about money.
The state of the global economy affects every single one of us. With economic growth threatened by financial regulation and the East and West at competitive odds, the real solutions to global recession can only come through international co-operation. This title suggests solutions to this global predicament.
'Within the cacophony of voices trying to explain the recent financial crisis, Elena Esposito's voice sounds clear and deep. Steering away from simplistic condemnations and equally simplistic prescriptions for betterment, she connects the very invention of derivatives to that eternal human hope – of controlling the future. While the task is impossible, the attempts never stop, and the very process of attempting it brings some consolation. And while derivatives can be seen, claim sociologists of finance, as performative, that is shaping the future they promise to control, even this is far from certain. Esposito's fascinating and beautiful work is an important contribution to the sociology of finance, a subdiscipline of sociology that took on itself an extremely important task of explaining how the finance markets really work.'– Barbara Czarniawska, University of Gothenburg, Sweden'This is a brilliant and timely book that shows how financing is centrally implicated in the very unpredictability and uncertainty it purports to master. With the incisiveness characteristic of her style and writing, Esposito reads economics in innovative ways that disclose the hidden premises by which financial instruments trade and consume the prospects of the future.' – Jannis Kallinikos, London School of Economics, UK'Elena Esposito's analysis of financial markets and of their recent decline is radically different from the analyses which can be found in economic journals or books. Financial operations are reduced to their basic dimensions: time and money. Under this perspective, what is sold on financial markets is the possibility for the creation of commitments in the course of time, the possibility for the combination of these commitments with one another, and the identification of chances for the achievement of profit opportunities through the creation of specific combinations. The author argues that the recent crisis of the financial system was caused by oversimplified visions of the future and of risk leading to the consequence that options were not available in the present because all possibilities had been used up by the future. This oversimplified vision of the future imploded, and trust with it. The state tried to reconstruct options for the future in order to open up new possibilities and chances for learning. The author does not deliver recipes on how to prevent severe crises of the financial system in the future. Yet, her concept facilitates understanding of how financial futures are opened up or closed and thus provides insights into basic principles on whose basis future opportunities can be kept open and trust can be maintained. Innovative reforms of the financial system can only develop on the basis of unconventional analyses. Elena Esposito's book contains an analysis of this kind.'– Alfred Kieser, Mannheim University, Germany'Elena Esposito's book is a fundamental analysis of time in economics. With economic rigour underpinned by sociological reasoning, she explains the futures market more clearly than is possible with economic analysis alone. Economic concepts are considered in terms of time – actors deal in the present with future risks by transferring these risks to the present situation. As a result, we get more options and more risks at the same time: at present. No equilibrium will balance these trades because of the asymmetry of time: our actual decisions deal with our imagination of the future, that is, with the future of the present, but the results will be realized in the presence of the future – different modalities of time. The book is a sound reflection on modelling time in economic theory, a "must" for economists.'– Birger P. Priddat, Witten/Herdecke University, Germany'The Future of Futures is an original and intellectually provocative book which forces the reader to think. Esposito's essay fulfils two rather different functions. On the one hand, it brings new and persuasive arguments to bear against the erroneous thesis that the present financial crisis is merely due to human mistakes and to some specific government failures. On the other hand, the book suggests that only by reconsidering the role of time in the economy is it possible to make full sense of the crisis and to re-orient in a desired direction the future movements of money. It is a well-known fact that traditional economics has always adhered to a spatial conception of time, according to which time, like space, is perfectly reversible. Whence its inability both to understand how economies develop and to prescribe adequate policies. The author's proposal is to move steps ahead in the direction of an analysis of an economy in time, where both historical time and time as duration can find a place. Esposito's well-written, jargon-free book will capture the attention of anyone seriously interested in the future of our market systems.'– Stefano Zamagni, University of Bologna and Johns Hopkins University, Bologna Center, Italy This book reconstructs the dynamics of economics, beginning explicitly with the role and the relevance of time: money uses the future in order to generate present wealth. Financial markets sell and buy risk, thereby binding the future. Elena Esposito explains that complex risk management techniques of structured finance produce new and uncontrolled risks because they use a simplified idea of the future, failing to account for how the future reacts to attempts at controlling it. During the recent financial crisis, the future had already been used (through securitizations, derivatives and other tools) to the extent that we had many futures, but no open future available.
