Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry all Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes the stuff you Should Know. Have you ever
Speaker 1: had one of those? Uh? I don't know why I
Speaker 1: wanted one, but when I was a kid, I wanted
Speaker 1: one of those coined things you want your hip to
Speaker 1: make change. I wanted one of those worse than anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't think like a peanut vendor. I don't
Speaker 1: know when I said whatever was at six flags whatever
Speaker 1: and I saw those things, I just thought it was boss.
Speaker 1: That's really funny. And I don't think I knew that
Speaker 1: you could buy them for like three bucks or else.
Speaker 1: I would have bought a bunch of them. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: there's not much to them. It's just like the thing's
Speaker 1: not counting anything when you press it with your thumbs releases.
Speaker 1: But each one, you know your quarters. They have different sizes,
Speaker 1: so you know, you can just without even look and
Speaker 1: you could go, here's three quarters, buddy. I know what
Speaker 1: somebody's getting for Christmas this year. I just thought of
Speaker 1: that out of nowhere. I haven't remember that since I
Speaker 1: was a kid. I was obsessed with those things for
Speaker 1: a little while. Well, you know what, you're technically obsessed
Speaker 1: with a dispenser of currency. How's that seed that one up? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: knocked it out of the part. I collected banks too,
Speaker 1: which is a weird thing for a kid to do.
Speaker 1: Banks like piggy banks. Yea even No, none of them
Speaker 1: were piggybanks. What was your favorite one? Oh? Man, I
Speaker 1: still have the collection. My mom's got them. Um wonder
Speaker 1: if they're worth any money? And I doubt it. I
Speaker 1: mean it was like a Garfield Bank and uh and
Speaker 1: uh opus the penguin Eric Davis? Now was it Opus
Speaker 1: from Bloom County? How am I blanking out on that?
Speaker 1: That was my favorite comic. I don't know that sounds right, man,
Speaker 1: I'm losing it, buddy. So the penguin from Bloom County,
Speaker 1: we're going with that. I was obsessed with Bloom County
Speaker 1: and then Change Counters and Biggiebanks. Cool. That was my childhood.
Speaker 1: And Dale Murphy not Eric Davis? Now, who's that? Who's
Speaker 1: for the Reds? Oh? The Reds player? Yeah? He was great, though,
Speaker 1: I love it he as a non Reds fan, I
Speaker 1: was an Eric Davis fan, I'm with you. Where are
Speaker 1: you obsessed with? I like baseball, baseball cards? Did you
Speaker 1: anything mad magazines? Yeah? Me too? Those are still I
Speaker 1: think at my dad's house. They'd better be. You still
Speaker 1: got him? Uh? What else did I collect? I saved
Speaker 1: up my sports illustrated for years too. Um. And remember
Speaker 1: the first one I ever got had Muhammad Ali on
Speaker 1: the cover. That's how old I am. It was during
Speaker 1: his comeback, and when he was like fat and mustachioed.
Speaker 1: Don't call it come back. It was not not much
Speaker 1: of one. That's not how that goes. Uh, how's that
Speaker 1: first side track to get us going? I haven't even
Speaker 1: done the intro. Let's hear it? So the intro is
Speaker 1: as follows Chuck in two thousand thirteen New York Magazine,
Speaker 1: not the New York Times, not New Yorker, New York Magazine,
Speaker 1: which is an equally good publication in that time out
Speaker 1: in New York, not the Village Voice, all right, Just
Speaker 1: New York Magazine. Um, which is actually where the movie
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Fever came from. It came from an article
Speaker 1: that was later admitted to be completely fabricated by the author. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in that magazine. Anyway, New York Magazine ran a really
Speaker 1: interesting article in January called um Or January two team
Speaker 1: called SuDS for Drugs, and it talked about how there's
Speaker 1: a huge black market for tide laundry detergent, specifically liquid
Speaker 1: tide in the United States. Yeah, they do not make
Speaker 1: it anymore. No, they make plenty of it, but tons
Speaker 1: of it gets stolen. And the reason why is tied
Speaker 1: is such an agreed upon great laundry detergent that tied
Speaker 1: and only tied. Like if you tried to use gain
Speaker 1: or um all or anything like that, you would it
Speaker 1: turned away. But if you have a jug of Tide
Speaker 1: liquid laundry detergent, you can buy drugs in the United
Speaker 1: States with it. It is agreed upon as a currency.
Speaker 1: I had no idea even though you can just buy
Speaker 1: it in the store. Yeah, that's that's the part I
Speaker 1: don't get, because if you're a crackhead and you steal
Speaker 1: a carton of them, then all of a sudden, you
Speaker 1: didn't have to pay for this tide and you can
Speaker 1: use it to buy drugs. Interesting, why don't use any
Speaker 1: of that stuff? And I don't mean to pick on
Speaker 1: just crackheads. If you're a junkie. Same thing. Sure, if
Speaker 1: you have a gambling habit. Yeah, we've man, we got
Speaker 1: we got a lot of crap from a couple of
Speaker 1: people by using about using the word junkie. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty derogatory if you think about it. I guess, well,
Speaker 1: but it's a word with a definition which means something,
Speaker 1: and that's what it means. I mean, it's not like
Speaker 1: we were just like slagging people. Yeah, no, I get
Speaker 1: what they're saying, though. You're saying like it's just such
Speaker 1: a dismissive term of anyone who's addicted. It really kind
Speaker 1: of flies in the face of the disease model of addiction. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had to talk to the people who call us
Speaker 1: out on that. I get it. But the point is
Speaker 1: tiede is now a currency as like remember our prison
Speaker 1: episode where we talked about how honey buns are currency. Yeah,
Speaker 1: same thing, right, cigarettes currency, deer skins, Yeah, those were
Speaker 1: currency once. That's where we get the word bucks from.
Speaker 1: I think what you're getting at. Oh, I can't wait
Speaker 1: to get to that stuff later. Okay, etymology, I love
Speaker 1: that stuff. Um, I think what you're trying to say
Speaker 1: is that or what you are saying is that currency
Speaker 1: is nothing more than the medium of exchange in a
Speaker 1: substitute for something, a good, or a service. It is
Speaker 1: an agreed upon that's the key. Yeah, it's got to
Speaker 1: be agreed upon. Yeah, you can't be like I'll give
Speaker 1: you five Lincoln logs for a car. Well that's what
Speaker 1: you do when you're a kid, right, and you go,
Speaker 1: I don't think I want Linkol logs, and everybody goes,
Speaker 1: oh you do, right. But if the other person says
Speaker 1: those Lincoln I don't want Lincoln logs, then what you
Speaker 1: have are Linkol logs, not a currency, because it has
Speaker 1: to be mutually agreed upon, like you say, like dollar bills. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've gone off on this on our show about the
Speaker 1: amazing fact that this paper we have all agreed is
Speaker 1: worth something, and as the only reason it's worth something
Speaker 1: that people dedicate their lives to pursuing paper is is
Speaker 1: as ephemeral as a cloud. Almost. Ye, not the greatest
Speaker 1: analogy you I've made, but it's still kind of works.
Speaker 1: All right. So let's let's talk on olden days and
Speaker 1: currency as a substitute for things. Um, what currency did
Speaker 1: was solved the problem. It allowed you to give change
Speaker 1: and make change. Yeah, that's a that's a big one
Speaker 1: because back in the day, if you had a bushel
Speaker 1: of corn and you wanted a chicken, you would go
Speaker 1: to your neighbor. Well, you had to find somebody they
Speaker 1: had a chicken that on a corn. So that's the
Speaker 1: first problem. That's a problem. But what if you do
Speaker 1: find someone, You're like, great, my neighbor's got a chicken
Speaker 1: and I've got this corn. He wants this corn, he
Speaker 1: wants the corn, but he says, you know what, this
Speaker 1: chicken is worth a lot more than that corn. Somebody's
Speaker 1: getting a bad deal until you can make change. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because what if you could. That's not the best example
Speaker 1: because you could take out some of the corn. Let's
Speaker 1: say you can't chop a chicken. Yeah, well you got
Speaker 1: a cow. Your neighbor has a chicken, and it's not
Speaker 1: an even trade. But you just need one chicken and
Speaker 1: your neighbor just needs one cow. You can't make change
Speaker 1: like that. You can't make change. So that's one of
Speaker 1: the first roles that currency it's fulfilled, was a way
Speaker 1: to make change, to make trade more equal. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: before that, I think there were a lot of bad
Speaker 1: deals going down out of desperation. You know, like if
Speaker 1: your family really needed that chicken for a reason, you
Speaker 1: might end up taking a bad deal just because you
Speaker 1: need that chicken. You give your cow away for that chicken. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then your family would berate you. That's right. Where's
Speaker 1: the milk, honey? Yeah, this is like the magic beans
Speaker 1: and sit in all over again. Can't milk a chicken, honey?
Speaker 1: You get berated by your wife. Another reason that currency
Speaker 1: uh became popular is because it allowed you for the
Speaker 1: first time to really amass wealth. Because you can harvest
Speaker 1: all the corn you want, but that corn is gonna
Speaker 1: go bad unless you can find a way to trade
Speaker 1: it in. A barn full of rotten corn does no
Speaker 1: one any good. It doesn't make you any richer, like
Speaker 1: in in practice. Practically speaking, you would be an extraordinarily
Speaker 1: wealthy person if you had tons of corn in theory,
Speaker 1: but like you said, it's gonna go bad, so you
Speaker 1: could lose all all your wealth would literally rot away.
Speaker 1: That's not the case with say a gold coin. Gold
Speaker 1: coins aren't gonna go bad and deteriorate. So there that
Speaker 1: stand in for those enormous stocks of corn. Because you
Speaker 1: had all that corn and then you traded it for
Speaker 1: gold coins. So what you did was you took your
Speaker 1: wealth of corn and stored it into something of equal value,
Speaker 1: in this case gold coins. Yeah, and that had a
Speaker 1: huge impact on civilization because the most powerful people were
Speaker 1: not just the ones who held the political and military influence.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, if you could accumulate wealth, then
Speaker 1: you could buy that jump. Yeah. It gave rise to
Speaker 1: the merchant class, and it democratized. Is that the word?
Speaker 1: It democratized the world. It did because before it was
Speaker 1: like you were born into a wealthy, noble family and
Speaker 1: that's gain power. And if you weren't t yes, that
Speaker 1: meant that you worked the land for this wealthy family.
Speaker 1: But if you can sell something and get money in
Speaker 1: exchange for it, instead of a cow for a chicken,
Speaker 1: you say that junk up and you buy someone to
Speaker 1: go kill that landowner, and then that's your land. Right. Democracy,
Speaker 1: democracy or uh. They are generally considered to be four
Speaker 1: categories of UM currency. You have commodity currency, coins, paper money,
Speaker 1: and electronic currency these days, and in the commodity system
Speaker 1: it is a placeholder, like we said, um for purchasing power,
Speaker 1: but it is also has value as a thing because
Speaker 1: corn is valuable. Um, it's not just a piece of paper,
Speaker 1: where in the case of the Aztecs or little cacao
Speaker 1: beans were valuable and so they use those this money.
Speaker 1: But um, one of the problems with that is if
Speaker 1: the person you're trading with doesn't find that valuable, then
Speaker 1: it's worthless. Yeah. Usually within a society, everyone will find
Speaker 1: that commodity currency valuable. Like the Aztecs with cacao. They
Speaker 1: love this stuff. They made chocolate out of it. It
Speaker 1: was the elixir of the gods, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: They drank it right. Yeah. Mina Zuma drank like forty
Speaker 1: cups of it today until he died from drinking too
Speaker 1: much chocolate. Um. But the cankey sitters who came didn't
Speaker 1: value cocow beans at all, so rather than trade, they
Speaker 1: just took everything yeah and dumped the cacao beans because
Speaker 1: it was worthless to them. Yeah, but that is a
Speaker 1: good example of a commodity based currency, Like even if
Speaker 1: even if everything else falls apart, that cocw beans still
Speaker 1: has value and that you can make chocolate out of it.
Speaker 1: In the society, chocolate is valued ergo they value the
Speaker 1: cocw beans which use it as currency. Plus in this case,
Speaker 1: cocow beans um are easy to carry, so they're portable,
Speaker 1: and they're plentiful and small so you can make change
Speaker 1: with them. Yeah, but not everything was the cacao bean.
Speaker 1: In commodity currency, a lot of stuff is perishable more
Speaker 1: perishable um, a lot of like cattle is super bulky.
Speaker 1: You can't carry on a bunch of cows, goats, goats um.
Speaker 1: But never less, that is a form of commodity currency.
Speaker 1: It's just had its downside. Like the goat has has
Speaker 1: value in and of itself. Yeah, cute, cute milk, meat
Speaker 1: and cute hair and cute and very cute. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get one of those pigmy goats one of these days.
Speaker 1: It's gonna happen. You're gonna come over to my house
Speaker 1: and the little goat is gonna bounce in the room.
Speaker 1: Clip clop, You're gonna go. What the Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen the lamb? I showed you that, right, dude, that's
Speaker 1: probably my top five things ever. If you don't know,
Speaker 1: be the lamb into YouTube right now. What was it
Speaker 1: a lamb? I think so? I thought it's a pigmy goat.
Speaker 1: I think it's a lamb. Jerrys this is lamb. Alright,
Speaker 1: I win. Alright, here's some cocow beans. Nice. Alright, so well,
Speaker 1: hold on, hold on. I feel like we've got a
Speaker 1: really good flow going. Okay, so let's interrupted with these messages. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. Let's see if we can get the mojo
Speaker 1: back again. All right, the mojo is still flowing because
Speaker 1: our message break in reality was only two seconds long.
Speaker 1: That's our dirty secret. Coins is our next form of currency.
Speaker 1: And they were first minute a minute in Lydia, which
Speaker 1: is modern Turkey, and they're king uh Croasis or crosis.
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm gonna make these little small metal ingots.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stamp them with our emblem. And it's six
Speaker 1: for d BC and this is called coins and it's
Speaker 1: worth something. And the Greek said this is great, and
Speaker 1: the Romans said this is great, and they're we're gonna
Speaker 1: make ours out of silver and gold. So it's actually
Speaker 1: worth something. Although when you think about it, that's just
Speaker 1: you know, worth something because someone says it's worth something. Gold, sure,
Speaker 1: all of it. Yeah. I read this Forbes article that
Speaker 1: basically said all currencies a fiat currency. Fiat currency means
Speaker 1: that it has valued by fiat, like the fiat of
Speaker 1: the king a decree um and it says the government
Speaker 1: or the king says this has value. It's it's nine
Speaker 1: seven gold. It's valuable, so go traded as such by fiat. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you think about the only things that really have
Speaker 1: real value or like food and water pretty much, you know,
Speaker 1: like you can make the case that a commodity based
Speaker 1: currency like cocao beans isn't necessarily a fiat currency because
Speaker 1: it does have inherent value that anybody can use. But
Speaker 1: gold is it's not really that valuable. It's not really
Speaker 1: that useful, especially in like a pre industrial society. I
Speaker 1: wonder if gold first became valuable because it was shiny
Speaker 1: and literally, yes, they could make pretty things with it, honestly, yes, interesting,
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly why. Because it's so malleable you
Speaker 1: can't make tools out of it. Even today, it's not
Speaker 1: that useful. I mean, they use it in some solid
Speaker 1: state electronics and things, but it's not it's more valuable
Speaker 1: simply because it's go old. Yeah, So even if it's
Speaker 1: backed with gold, it is technically still a fiat currency,
Speaker 1: I've never heard that term f I A T. So
Speaker 1: what does the Fiat car all about? That mean? It's
Speaker 1: just special because they say it is all right? Um
Speaker 1: in China, I thought the Chinese made the first coins,
Speaker 1: but um, yeah, Grabster says that it happened about the
Speaker 1: same time it did in the West fifth century BC.
Speaker 1: They started out oddly with tools like knives, shapes as
Speaker 1: currency with little holes drilled in them so they could
Speaker 1: keep it on a string, and they just shrank over
Speaker 1: the ears until it was about the size of a coin, right,
Speaker 1: so I thought was odd, But they kept a hole
Speaker 1: in there. So even until like the mid nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: the Chinese coins still where this, these little round coins
Speaker 1: with a hole in the middle so you could string
Speaker 1: them on a string. Yeah, that's because they didn't have
Speaker 1: the little coin dispenser on the hip they would have
Speaker 1: thought of that, which surprising because the Chinese invented practically everything,
Speaker 1: the coin dispenser, the hip mounting coin dispenser. Did they
Speaker 1: even still make those? Sure they do. I'll bet alright,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna buy one. Um. If not, Archie McPhee probably
Speaker 1: makes it in an ironic version. So who's that they make? Um?
Speaker 1: You've seen all their stuff. They make like funny like
Speaker 1: they were the original, probably like bacon air, freshener, car fresh,
Speaker 1: they make stuff like that. They make horsehead, gotcha, they
Speaker 1: outfit um, they all their stuffs in urban outfitters, probably
Speaker 1: in the chakey section. Yes, all right, I hate them. Then.
Speaker 1: Uh So, one of the big impacts of coins was
Speaker 1: now the government actually controlled the money supply and could
Speaker 1: manipulate it and say what it's worth. And Roman emperors
Speaker 1: were dumb and said, you know what, We're just gonna
Speaker 1: reduce your amount of precious metal and some of these
Speaker 1: because that makes us richer. But that devalued things such
Speaker 1: that it ended up being one of the factors in
Speaker 1: their downfall. Yeah, they didn't quite understand how it worked,
Speaker 1: and it took thousands of years for anybody to figure
Speaker 1: out really how it worked. But basically, if you still
Speaker 1: know how it works, kind of, you know, I think
Speaker 1: we have a better grasp than the early Roman emperors
Speaker 1: because they would say, hey, man, I've got a ton
Speaker 1: of gold, and my predecessors would make ten thousand gold
Speaker 1: coins out of a ton. But I, being as clever
Speaker 1: as I am, I'm going to make twenty thousand gold
Speaker 1: coins out of this ton and double my money. But
Speaker 1: rather than double the money, it devalued the currency and
Speaker 1: led to the decline of the Roman Empire. That's right,
Speaker 1: like you said, but that's how yeah, And after that, um,
Speaker 1: it took a while for coins to come back in fashion,
Speaker 1: all the way to the Renaissance because in the dark Ages,
Speaker 1: because of a lot of that uh stuff, people didn't
Speaker 1: trust coins, right, and for good reason, because there was
Speaker 1: a someone behind it who could decree the percentage of
Speaker 1: gold in that coin. The thing is is um and
Speaker 1: we'll get to this later. The powers that be can
Speaker 1: decree value, but ultimately it's up to the general public,
Speaker 1: the people who are trading in these things, to determine
Speaker 1: really how valuable they are. There's something called perception of
Speaker 1: value that has to do with just how valuable a
Speaker 1: currency is are not we'll talk about in a minute,
Speaker 1: but that's what happened in Rome. Uh. Next up, we
Speaker 1: have paper money, or is they call it folding money
Speaker 1: here in the South, and they paper money was first
Speaker 1: developed by the Chinese as well, and they used um,
Speaker 1: like you said, buckskin sometimes bark, parchment, and it was
Speaker 1: a bill of payment and leather was also used in
Speaker 1: Europe around eleven d which didn't really catch on then.
Speaker 1: Now I think leather money be kind of cool though,
Speaker 1: leather moniture. If you know, if you hate animal, what
Speaker 1: better way to kill more of them? I wonder how
Speaker 1: much a cow would have been worth then, yeah, because
Speaker 1: you while they were using the skin for other stuff anyway,
Speaker 1: good point though. Uh. In Sweden in sixteen sixty one
Speaker 1: they issued paper money, but they didn't quite understand it
Speaker 1: either and flooded the market with it, which made it
Speaker 1: almost worthless as well. Still still had to figure it out. Um.
Speaker 1: I get the the uh, I get the desire though, like, oh,
Speaker 1: everyone says this stuff's worth something, let's just print a
Speaker 1: ton of it exactly. Yeah. Um. So it didn't catch
Speaker 1: on after the Swedish experiment of the seventeenth century, but
Speaker 1: it didn't take too much longer. It was the eighteenth
Speaker 1: century when paper money finally did catch on, and it
Speaker 1: was based on the practice of goldsmiths at the time,
Speaker 1: where if you gave them some gold, they give you
Speaker 1: basically an iou say they were making something out of
Speaker 1: the gold, or they were hanging onto the gold before
Speaker 1: you you had what what It amounts to a promissory
Speaker 1: note saying you bring this I O U back to me,
Speaker 1: and I'll give you this amount of gold and return.
Speaker 1: It was basically the first what what's called gold backed
Speaker 1: paper currency. And once banks figured out just how that
Speaker 1: could work in theory and in practice, anybody could start
Speaker 1: issuing currency. Yeah, and um money was backed by gold,
Speaker 1: even right here in the US all the way up
Speaker 1: until nine UM every dollar had and not theory, every
Speaker 1: dollar had gold somewhere, not just dollars. Pretty much any
Speaker 1: paper currency in the world at the time was backed
Speaker 1: by gold, silver, some sort of precious metal that we
Speaker 1: all agreed was valuable because it's shiny. But there was
Speaker 1: a stock somewhere in the world that you could trade
Speaker 1: your paper money for that value in gold. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could go somewhere to the gold tradery say here, I
Speaker 1: want all this money in gold. Did you know That's
Speaker 1: what the the Wizard of Oz is about. It's an
Speaker 1: allegory for the gold standard. Oh man, it's depending on
Speaker 1: who you ask, it's about ten different things. It's an allegory,
Speaker 1: populist allegory for the gold standards. I just posted an
Speaker 1: article about like ten different theories on what Wizard of
Speaker 1: Odds means on our Facebook page, and yours is right
Speaker 1: and then everyone else is wrong. Thank you. That's all
Speaker 1: I ever want to hear from you. I UM. So,
Speaker 1: now we're on to E money, which is uh, it
Speaker 1: seems like something super new, but it actually came about
Speaker 1: after World War Two when UM banks started recording their
Speaker 1: information of the day onto magnetic reels and taking it
Speaker 1: to the Federal Reserve Bank, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they said, you know, we don't need these silly ten
Speaker 1: dollar bills because we can just record this all electronically.
Speaker 1: And all it took then was a wire connection and
Speaker 1: trust for people to trust that this really is money,
Speaker 1: even though I'm not seeing any money right right then.
Speaker 1: That is the real distinction of it, because with an
Speaker 1: electronic transfer, originally you're transferring information about money, like I
Speaker 1: will I have a hundred thousand dollars over here that
Speaker 1: I officially give to you, and so that that electronic
Speaker 1: transfer becomes a promissory note in and of itself. UM
Speaker 1: and they figured out that they can do this after
Speaker 1: they realize that money in and of itself isn't valuable,
Speaker 1: so we can just do this whole thing electronically. And
Speaker 1: like you said, they did have hundred thousand dollar notes
Speaker 1: and apparently there's some in circulation still. There's a couple
Speaker 1: hundred of them in circulation. They had five hundred, one thousand,
Speaker 1: ten thousand, and hundred thousand dollar bills. There's a really
Speaker 1: neat mental floss article that you can read called a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollar Bill, The Story behind Large denomination Currency,
Speaker 1: and it talks all about that. But it was prior
Speaker 1: to the magnetic tapes that were passed from bank to
Speaker 1: bank or that recorded this information, and this is how
Speaker 1: banks would settle up transfers through ten thousand, hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollar bills. Yeah, and the hundred thousand UM has Woodrow
Speaker 1: Wilson on it and they only made those for about
Speaker 1: three weeks. But um, that was never like in the public.
Speaker 1: That was just between banks. Like no, it was never
Speaker 1: in circulation, and it's still there's still around from what
Speaker 1: I understand though. Yeah, there was UM in nineteen I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine there were less than four hundred
Speaker 1: five bills, thousand dollar bills, five thousand dollar bills, and
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollar bills um, all between like three and
Speaker 1: four hundred still in circulation, which I thought was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: And they're usually worth frame now, you know, but there
Speaker 1: were way more than their face value. Um. This mental
Speaker 1: Plus article points out that if you have a pristine
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollar bill, it's worth at least ten times that. Wow.
Speaker 1: And so they all had different presidents throughout the years.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a single version of it. Uh, there
Speaker 1: was a bunch of different versions of all those except
Speaker 1: for the hundred thousand. Yeah, it was always Wilson, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he just printed it for three weeks, would would he? Um?
Speaker 1: I wonder why he got that on her Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, because he was money. He didn't even know it.
Speaker 1: So uh with electronic money. Another few things really helps
Speaker 1: submit that as a as a viable thing. One was
Speaker 1: the first credit card in n Diners Club said you
Speaker 1: know what, rich businessman, here's a piece of plastic, so
Speaker 1: you can impress your friends by not even carrying cash,
Speaker 1: and uh, pay for whatever you want with this thing,
Speaker 1: and then we'll charge you some interest and then you'll
Speaker 1: pay us back. And we got even further from the
Speaker 1: commodity by saying, now you're not even using cash, we're
Speaker 1: using electronic promissory notes by charging this that's the promissory note.
Speaker 1: And then they realized, hey, this shouldn't be just for
Speaker 1: rich dudes, because we can financially cripple everybody exactly. This
Speaker 1: interesting is really neat. So everyone should have a credit card.
Speaker 1: And today there's over two hundred million visas, which started
Speaker 1: in ninety Then the Social Security Administration started doing e
Speaker 1: deposits all the way back in and people kind of
Speaker 1: got used to the idea that all right, I see
Speaker 1: it's in my bank account now, so I trust it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a big step forward. Yeah, it took a
Speaker 1: little while to catch on. But then now it's, like
Speaker 1: the grabster points out, people started paying bills, transferring money
Speaker 1: between accounts, and sending money electronically without ever even touching it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is true. Like I hadn't thought about that. But
Speaker 1: there's plenty of money that that I earned and spend.
Speaker 1: That's just like it's never physical ever, that's all my money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I almost never have or use cash. Like I get
Speaker 1: paid electronically. It goes to a bank in number, and
Speaker 1: then I have a American Express that I pay for
Speaker 1: things with, and then I pay for that electronically and
Speaker 1: I'm just trusting that this is. As long as the
Speaker 1: lights are on, I guess everything's working out right. Exactly
Speaker 1: basic and basically it's like the future, like what everybody
Speaker 1: talks about in the future, We're not gonna have money,
Speaker 1: We're gonna have credits. Well, the future is here. Apparently
Speaker 1: eight percent of the world's currency is in hard like currency.
Speaker 1: This all sounds so dangerous when you start talking about
Speaker 1: it like that, Like all it takes this one big
Speaker 1: crash of electronic crash, and what if they were like
Speaker 1: all that money that you thought you had, it is
Speaker 1: not here. Now we don't know what happened to it.
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible. Remember they have the fd I s
Speaker 1: though yet United States at least remember the early days
Speaker 1: of internet purchases, how distrustful we all were, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not putting my credit card, I'm not taking that thing in.
Speaker 1: And it never occurred to us that we hand it
Speaker 1: to like a waiter or you know, whoever that can
Speaker 1: do anything with it. And then it finally just became
Speaker 1: that's important, just because so many people were doing it
Speaker 1: that the chances of your credit card being stolen um
Speaker 1: were lower coupled with the fact that it became evident
Speaker 1: that credit card companies were willing to just like white
Speaker 1: clean deaths a crude like that illegally made people a
Speaker 1: lot a lot more trusting of it. I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had a lady in front of me this grocery
Speaker 1: store the day that wrote a check, and I was
Speaker 1: just like, oh, were you Just like I know, I
Speaker 1: longer minute, but I did want to say, like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a better way of doing that now checks And
Speaker 1: I can't remember the last check I wrote. It's been
Speaker 1: years and years and years since I've written a check
Speaker 1: for me. It's usually like like a government thing like
Speaker 1: a tag or something, tag tax or something. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: do all that with my card too. Uh. And then,
Speaker 1: of course, if you want to talk about the bleeding
Speaker 1: edge of electronic money, um e g. Bitcoin and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, should go listen to our bitcoin episode,
Speaker 1: which we're told was pretty good. Yeah. I think even
Speaker 1: the guys from pot on pod Our show and they
Speaker 1: eisode and said we did a good job of explaining it.
Speaker 1: So we'll talk more about money because that's the topic
Speaker 1: of this episode right after these messages. So Chuck, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the gold standard and how that's what the
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz is about. And um, prior to that,
Speaker 1: with the gold standard, it was I mean, inflation happened.
Speaker 1: The price of gold fluctuated, so therefore the price of
Speaker 1: anything pegged to it, like the dollar, would fluctuate too.
Speaker 1: With when we abandoned the gold standard officially in nine
Speaker 1: but prior to that, I think in the thirties is
Speaker 1: when it really started. Um, we really took a huge
Speaker 1: leap of faith because there's nothing backing it anymore, Like
Speaker 1: there's a huge it's a myth that you can take
Speaker 1: your dollar bill and turn it in for gold. They will,
Speaker 1: some guys in white coats will come and lock you
Speaker 1: up in a padded room for a little while. They said,
Speaker 1: you can come and buy this gold ring with your cat.
Speaker 1: Pretty much you can buy gold bullion with it, but
Speaker 1: you cant yeah, exactly, and we're going to charge you
Speaker 1: some fees for that too. Um. So once we abandoned
Speaker 1: the gold standard, it was a big leap of faith
Speaker 1: because um, as Milton Freedman put it, quote, the pieces
Speaker 1: of green paper have value because everybody thinks they have
Speaker 1: value as long as we all think together and believe
Speaker 1: together they will stay valuable. But there are certain times,
Speaker 1: there's certain occasions and events when we all believe that
Speaker 1: things become a little less valuable, that currency is a
Speaker 1: little less valuable than at other times. So this perception
Speaker 1: of value can have an impact on the value of currency.
Speaker 1: And the Grabster gives a pretty good example. It's when
Speaker 1: we deflate or deva value currency relative to other currencies,
Speaker 1: which will do sometimes because we want to attract that
Speaker 1: currency's native investors over here in the US. So like
Speaker 1: if right now you can buy five francs to the dollar,
Speaker 1: euros five euros to the dollar, um, and we say, what,
Speaker 1: we want to encourage more investment in Europe. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna let the dollar devalue um and we're gonna make
Speaker 1: it so it's equal to three euros and then we'll
Speaker 1: stabilize it. Well, that will encourage more people in Europe
Speaker 1: to invest in the United States because the euro now
Speaker 1: has more buying power relative to the dollar. But everyone
Speaker 1: in the in the United States because wtf, we got
Speaker 1: all these dollars and now it's worthless because you just
Speaker 1: told us that you're going to make it worth less
Speaker 1: relative to the euro. Nothing really happened to the dollar
Speaker 1: that everybody agreed literally overnight that the dollar is less
Speaker 1: valuable now because it was devalued. That's one way that
Speaker 1: that currency can fluctuate these days. Yeah, I wish I
Speaker 1: had a better understanding of the when people say what
Speaker 1: the dollar is worth sometimes that just makes my head spin.
Speaker 1: I have one for you. You're gonna love this, man.
Speaker 1: Let's hear it. The Big Mac Index. It's it's exactly
Speaker 1: what you just said. If you want an understanding of it.
Speaker 1: There is a guy in six who wrote in The
Speaker 1: Economist basically the Big Mac Index, and and it says
Speaker 1: we cover this in uh one of them. We may
Speaker 1: have done it in their stuff super stuff out to
Speaker 1: the economy. Then that was eighty years ago, though it was.
Speaker 1: But what so we'll go over it again. The Big
Speaker 1: Mac Index says the price of an end of a
Speaker 1: big Mac relative to the price of a big Mac
Speaker 1: in another country. Right, So it's basically saying you can,
Speaker 1: and it's tongue in cheek, but it actually does kind
Speaker 1: of work. You can you can show the eying power,
Speaker 1: the purchasing power of one um currency relative to another
Speaker 1: based on how much a big Mat costs in each country.
Speaker 1: And once you once you see it and and and
Speaker 1: look at it like that, you go to the economists
Speaker 1: and type in the big macindext and it will bring
Speaker 1: this up. And it's an interactive scale um, which makes
Speaker 1: it awesome, and you understand relative purchasing power. Well, I
Speaker 1: should spend some time on that side, thank you. It
Speaker 1: will make me hungry. So then the other way that
Speaker 1: things can devalue is with supply, and that is just
Speaker 1: basically supplying demand. Like when there's a lot more money available,
Speaker 1: it by nature becomes less valuable. Yeah, demand is high,
Speaker 1: prices go up. Demand supplies high prices go down, right,
Speaker 1: So that's inflation and deflation that goes up, that goes down. Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess we should answer this. Are you watching the
Speaker 1: Simpsons every episode marathon? I've tuned in some here and there,
Speaker 1: But what I've really enjoyed is that in flux of
Speaker 1: articles about like the best seasons, the best episodes, it's
Speaker 1: really like a tripped out memory lane. I do not
Speaker 1: have f x X and so therefore I'm bereft. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you've seen them all anyway. Yeah, it would be
Speaker 1: so nice to see him again like this you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're running the NonStop, like you wake up
Speaker 1: at three am. It's I know, I don't think I
Speaker 1: wake up at three am and realize that I'm missing
Speaker 1: at Simpsons right then, Well you caught Bed goes up,
Speaker 1: Bed Goes down. That's because I love the Simpson exactly. So. Uh.
Speaker 1: We talked about inflation and deflation. But um, if you
Speaker 1: want to know more about that, you should check out
Speaker 1: how much money is there in the world? Are super
Speaker 1: stuff guided to the economy? Stag inflation? Those are all
Speaker 1: some good episodes we've done on that kind of thing. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and we mentioned earlier, you know, I talked about I
Speaker 1: can see how you might be incentivized to just print
Speaker 1: loads of money if you want more of it. Um,
Speaker 1: And we've covered and other shows why that's a bad idea.
Speaker 1: But never has it been more evident than in post
Speaker 1: World War One Germany they had I mean, this is
Speaker 1: amazing stuff. I think Zimbabwe beat them eventually, didn't they.
Speaker 1: I couldn't remember. It's hungry, Well, no, I think it
Speaker 1: was Zimbabwe. Um, I don't know. Maybe it was hungry,
Speaker 1: remember hungry. He had a revolution in the forties that
Speaker 1: was just staggering numbers of hyperinflation. Yeah, but this is
Speaker 1: a pretty good example of hyperinflation. Well, after World War One,
Speaker 1: Germany um owed in war reparations about thirty three billion
Speaker 1: dollars in like nineteen nineteen dollars, and they didn't have
Speaker 1: that kind of money, so they said, well, let's just
Speaker 1: print a bunch of it. Uh, and see what happened. Um.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna be backed by any kind of commodity. Um.
Speaker 1: And it resulted in hyper inflation to the extent where
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty three it was called the hyper inflation
Speaker 1: of the Weimer Republic from June ninety one to January nine.
Speaker 1: It's because they funded the war through borrowing. Only they
Speaker 1: didn't like raise taxes to pay for the war. They
Speaker 1: literally borrowed money to pay for World War One, and
Speaker 1: it resulted in eventually forty two billion billion with a
Speaker 1: b German marks was equal to one penny of US money.
Speaker 1: And I didn't think that could be right, but it's right, yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And it was so bad that they there was something
Speaker 1: called a mental condition called zero stroke that it caused,
Speaker 1: which is when you're compelled to write endless rows of
Speaker 1: zeros because when you see some of these numbers, it
Speaker 1: just you're like, is that even a number when you're
Speaker 1: trying to do these calculations, and it it. There was
Speaker 1: an influx of zero stroke in Germany at the time,
Speaker 1: and so I was wondering, like, how did Germany ever recover?
Speaker 1: They basically started over again and said this isn't money anymore.
Speaker 1: We're gonna start over and we're gonna have a new
Speaker 1: bank issues something called uh des now the UM rent
Speaker 1: rent a mark, and this is our new money. Not
Speaker 1: all that money is no good to start but this
Speaker 1: is actually back. There was a bank, the Deutschen rent
Speaker 1: a bank mortgaged land and industrial goods to the tune
Speaker 1: of about three point two billion dollars like hard assets
Speaker 1: that were backing this money. And it worked and it
Speaker 1: turned around almost overnight to the point where a US
Speaker 1: dollar was worth four point to rent a marks four
Speaker 1: And I guess everyone just got on board. It's all right.
Speaker 1: That old money is no good. Wall paper your walls
Speaker 1: with it, and now we have new money, you know. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of historians credit that really difficult period that
Speaker 1: Germany was put through um or put itself through, depending
Speaker 1: on who you ask. After World War One is the
Speaker 1: reason why fascism was allowed to take hold there, I
Speaker 1: believe it, and the lead up to World War two,
Speaker 1: because I mean when I say it's stabilized, its stabilized
Speaker 1: the money overnight, but it still wasn't like they were
Speaker 1: still in bad shape. You know, it took a while
Speaker 1: to dig dig out of that. Did you see that
Speaker 1: thing I sent you on um Cowery shells, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit. Cali shells are sea snail shells.
Speaker 1: They're little, tiny white shells that look porcelain, and literally
Speaker 1: for about two thousand years UM they were used as
Speaker 1: currency throughout the world, and they came almost exclusively from
Speaker 1: the Maldives UM. And they would like, if you were
Speaker 1: an Arab trader, you would go down to the Maldives,
Speaker 1: you would buy about a million uh Coweri shells for
Speaker 1: one gold dinar. Then you go back to India or
Speaker 1: go to India and you would sell ten thousand of
Speaker 1: them for a gold dinar. So you could just make
Speaker 1: a ton of money overnight. And then the further and
Speaker 1: further away they got from the Maldives and the closer
Speaker 1: and closer to China they got, which is a country
Speaker 1: that used these things like crazy, they were worth more
Speaker 1: and more. Yeah, and the Maldives, it's just like you
Speaker 1: just scoop up baskets full of them, and they were
Speaker 1: not nearly is valuable, but as you got away from
Speaker 1: them Maldives, they grew more and more valuable, and they
Speaker 1: were used His currency literally until the mid nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: I mean they started and we have the earliest reference
Speaker 1: in about three fifty b C. And in the eighteen
Speaker 1: fifties is when the the currency finally collapsed, just because
Speaker 1: there were so many of them on the market that
Speaker 1: people would you know, they would pay using five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand cowry shells and you'd have to count out five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand cowery shells. And didn't they use them because
Speaker 1: they were like pretty, and they were hardy and like
Speaker 1: didn't break really easy, and they're portable, plentiful small, so
Speaker 1: you can make change with them. Yeah, and people like them.
Speaker 1: So therefore they became currency. But they lasted His currency
Speaker 1: for like two thousand years. Again, all you have to
Speaker 1: do is agree that's something, although that's a weird thing,
Speaker 1: because that's something you can just go out and find
Speaker 1: if you're in the right part of the world if
Speaker 1: you're in the right exactly. That's why they were less
Speaker 1: valuable in the Maldives, more valuable like in China. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you want to talk etymology? Yeah, you said, what was
Speaker 1: the first one? He said? The buck comes from from
Speaker 1: buckskin and the sawbuck. I don't know where the sawbuck
Speaker 1: is a tenner, right, I believe so the word fee
Speaker 1: comes from the German word for cattle U v v
Speaker 1: e h. Interesting, right, yeah, speaking of shells, you know,
Speaker 1: I believe Pacific Northwest tribes used whop them whamp them,
Speaker 1: which were white shells um, and the phrase shell out
Speaker 1: comes from that. When you pay somebody in shells, you
Speaker 1: were shelling out. I wonder if that's where clams comes from.
Speaker 1: Probably what's your funny word for money? Beans, bones, simoleans, samoleans.
Speaker 1: I tried to look up simolean because I think everyone
Speaker 1: knows that's the cartoon currency, but I couldn't find anything.
Speaker 1: It kept defaulting and saying, do you mean Somali money?
Speaker 1: It was like, no, I mean Samolean. I think it's um.
Speaker 1: I even put cartoons and I couldn't find much of
Speaker 1: anything except like I couldn't find an origin, like who
Speaker 1: made that up. Let's say Napoleon since it rhymes maybe
Speaker 1: Chuck Jones. It's possible. Could ask our friend Jessica. She
Speaker 1: might know you saw Charles Schultz's granddaughter email this. Huh No,
Speaker 1: I didn't see that. Yes, and now Chuck Jones's granddaughter
Speaker 1: and Charles Schultz's granddaughter are both stuff you should know fans,
Speaker 1: which is uh pretty awesome. Waiting for a returne emails
Speaker 1: like you gotta give me some inside story here please
Speaker 1: about Grandpa? Um? Do you want to know the animology
Speaker 1: of Semolean? Do you have it? Yeah? Man? How did
Speaker 1: my Google uh skills not paying out? I am proud
Speaker 1: of you, Chuck yeah for not saying yeah. Uh So.
Speaker 1: Semolean is spelled s I M O L e O n.
Speaker 1: It's an English word, all right, That's where I cut sidetracked.
Speaker 1: They think that it is a late nineteenth century blend
Speaker 1: of simone, which is apparently a French word for dollar. Okay,
Speaker 1: and Napoleon really yeah? And why was it exclusive the cartoons?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but they think it came from New
Speaker 1: Orleans in the late nineteenth century. Simone um was either
Speaker 1: dollar or sixpence coin. It was a British slang and Napoleon,
Speaker 1: So I guess that's where Smolean came from. Would you
Speaker 1: get that with the website words? Since dot eu? All right,
Speaker 1: I believe that dot eu that says at all. They
Speaker 1: have a clean look to their website, which makes me
Speaker 1: believe that they know what they're talking about. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: you look at a website, you can get a lot
Speaker 1: of information about its accuracy, just if it looks like
Speaker 1: a MySpace page from um, I hope my space is
Speaker 1: around in nineteen because the penance will right in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't my space. Then my Space came about, and
Speaker 1: the word dollar itself, um account in Czechoslovakia and a
Speaker 1: town called well, it doesn't matter where it was. He
Speaker 1: started minting silver coins in fifteen nineteen Yakimov and they
Speaker 1: were called uh Taller Grossian, which was shortened to Taller's
Speaker 1: and taller eventually became dollar in the United States. And
Speaker 1: we talked in the Salt episode about how the word
Speaker 1: salary came from assault. So I looked again because I
Speaker 1: think he said that that wasn't true, that that's a myth,
Speaker 1: and it's not necessarily true that it's a myth. From
Speaker 1: what I can tell. It's just unproven. So in the
Speaker 1: first century, Pliny the Elder, the Roman historian, says a
Speaker 1: good beer too, that that's what the word salt came from.
Speaker 1: Was they used to pay soldiers in antiquity in salt.
Speaker 1: But he doesn't back it up and they can't verify it.
Speaker 1: That's a good story. Yeah, at the very least is
Speaker 1: about a two thousand year old story. So let's go
Speaker 1: with you. It's true. Yeah. I had a history teacher
Speaker 1: in college, my best history teacher ever, that said, never
Speaker 1: let facts get in the way of a good story. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've heard that. He was a good guy. I can't
Speaker 1: remember his name. He might have had him. He was man.
Speaker 1: He was great, one of my first big inspirational teachers
Speaker 1: in college. That is, I got you so much so
Speaker 1: that I don't remember his name. That one guy. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about currency, you should
Speaker 1: listen to any number of our episodes on currency, including
Speaker 1: this one again. Or you can type currency into the
Speaker 1: search part how stuff works dot com. It will bring
Speaker 1: up this article. And since I said search parts, time
Speaker 1: for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this rare shout out.
Speaker 1: We don't do this a lot um, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do it today because I like the cut of this
Speaker 1: dude's jib. My name is Jared Bagnal exclamation point. I'm
Speaker 1: writing to see if you could do a tribute to
Speaker 1: my wife, A Bree Bagnal and you're listener mail. I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan of you guys, but my wife is
Speaker 1: most definitely your number one fan. Can safely say that
Speaker 1: a few hundred of your listeners could be attributed to
Speaker 1: her alone. She has dozens of people hooked on s
Speaker 1: Y s K and from them a dozen each. She's
Speaker 1: so excited every Tuesday and Thursday that your podcast comes out.
Speaker 1: She tells everyone about them. She's the nicest person in
Speaker 1: the world, caring, sweet, shy, and deserve some recognition for
Speaker 1: being so awesome. Our one year anniversary is coming up.
Speaker 1: Got married in Jamaica, and though it was an amazing experience,
Speaker 1: she's still bummed that we couldn't go with our family. UM,
Speaker 1: I would like to see I would like to see
Speaker 1: if you could dedicate your listener portion to her into
Speaker 1: our anniversary so everyone can know that she's great. But
Speaker 1: it's pretty nice. Thanks Josh Chuck and Jerry Um. Did
Speaker 1: I spell that right? No, you did not. How did
Speaker 1: you spell it? J E r R Y. Let's just
Speaker 1: get it on the record if we haven't before, j
Speaker 1: E R I. That's right. Um. For the five percent
Speaker 1: of people who listen to listener mail, hey, uh, this
Speaker 1: would be a great surprise for her while running into
Speaker 1: your podcast to hear this tribute. So Jared number two
Speaker 1: fans writing on behalf of Bree number one fan at
Speaker 1: the anniversary, Way to go, way to make it to
Speaker 1: the one year mark. I wish you many many more
Speaker 1: years of happiness to come. We both do. Yes, I'm
Speaker 1: speaking for Josh, although thanks man. Do you wish them?
Speaker 1: Of course I do. You're like, I'm glad for them. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to take your chances to see if
Speaker 1: Chuck will give you or your loved going to shout
Speaker 1: out on the episode you know the podcast, that's what
Speaker 1: I meant, good luck, uh exactly. You can try tweeting
Speaker 1: it to us at s y s K podcast. You
Speaker 1: can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff
Speaker 1: Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and as always,
Speaker 1: join us out our home on the web. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com