Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, this is Charles W. Chuck Bryant here to
Speaker 1: talk about currency, specifically the September eight, two fourteen Stuff
Speaker 1: You Should Know episode How Currency Works. I think this
Speaker 1: one was really cool because it's not just money, all
Speaker 1: kinds of currency everybody. So that's why this is my pick.
Speaker 1: I hope you check it out and hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: it all over again. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and Jerry all Right. Yeah, that makes the
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know. Have you ever had one of those? Uh?
Speaker 1: I don't know why I wanted one, but when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I wanted one of those coin things
Speaker 1: you wanted your hip to make change. I wanted one
Speaker 1: of those worst than anything, really. Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: like a peanut vendor. I don't know when I said
Speaker 1: when I was at six Flags what everyone I saw
Speaker 1: those things? I just thought it was boss. That's really funny.
Speaker 1: And I don't think I knew that you could buy
Speaker 1: them for like three bucks or else. I would have
Speaker 1: a bunch of them. Yeah, because there's not much to them.
Speaker 1: It's just like the thing's not counting anything when you
Speaker 1: press it with your thumbs. Releases. But each one, you know,
Speaker 1: your quarters, they have different sizes, so you know, you
Speaker 1: can just without even looking, you could go, here's three quarters, buddy.
Speaker 1: I know what somebody's getting for Christmas this year. I
Speaker 1: just thought of that out of nowhere. I haven't remember
Speaker 1: that since I was a kid. I was obsessed with
Speaker 1: those things for a little while. Well, you know what,
Speaker 1: you were technically obsessed with a dispenser of currency? How's
Speaker 1: that ted that one up? Yeah? Yeah, knocked it out
Speaker 1: of the part. I collected banks too, which is a
Speaker 1: weird thing for a kid to do. Banks like piggy banks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even then, none of them were piggybanks. Well what was
Speaker 1: your favorite one? Oh man? I still have the collection.
Speaker 1: My mom's got them. Um. I wonder if they're worth
Speaker 1: any money, and I doubt it. I mean it was
Speaker 1: like a Garfield Bank and uh and uh Opus the
Speaker 1: penguin Eric Davis? Now was it Opus from bloom County? How?
Speaker 1: Why am I blanking out on that? That was my
Speaker 1: favorite comic? I don't know that sounds right, man, I'm
Speaker 1: losing it, buddy, So the penguin from Bloom County, we're
Speaker 1: going with that. I was obsessed with Bloom County and
Speaker 1: then Change Counters nice 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
Speaker 1: great though, I love it he as a non Reds fan.
Speaker 1: I was an Eric Davis fan. I'm with you. Where
Speaker 1: are you obsessed with? I liked baseball, baseball cards? Did
Speaker 1: you claim anything? Mad magazines? Yeah? Me too. Those are
Speaker 1: still I think at my dad's house. They'd better be.
Speaker 1: You still got him? Uh? What else did I collect?
Speaker 1: I saved up my Sports Illustrated for years too. Um.
Speaker 1: And remember the first one I ever got had Muhammad
Speaker 1: Ali on the cover. That's all I am. Wow. It
Speaker 1: was during his comeback and when he was like fat
Speaker 1: and mustachioed. Don't call it a comeback. It was not
Speaker 1: not much one. That's not how that goes? Uh? How's
Speaker 1: that first side track? To get us going? I haven't
Speaker 1: even done the intro. Let's hear it? So the intro
Speaker 1: is as follows Chuck in two New York Magazine, not
Speaker 1: 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. Awesome. Anyway, New York Magazine ran a
Speaker 1: really interesting article in January called um or January called
Speaker 1: SuDS for Drugs, and it talked about how there's a
Speaker 1: huge black market for tide laundry detergent, specifically liquid tide
Speaker 1: in the United States. Yeah, they did not make it anymore. No,
Speaker 1: they make plenty of it, but tons of it gets stolen.
Speaker 1: And the reason why is tied is such an agreed
Speaker 1: upon great laundry detergent that tied and only tied. Like
Speaker 1: if you try to use gain or um all or
Speaker 1: anything like that, you would get turned away. But if
Speaker 1: you have a jug of tied liquid laundry detergent, you
Speaker 1: can buy drugs in the United States with it. It
Speaker 1: is agreed upon as a currency. I had no idea
Speaker 1: even though you can just buy it in the store. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's see. That's the part I don't get, because if
Speaker 1: you're a crackhead and you steal a carton of them,
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, you didn't have to pay
Speaker 1: for this tide and you can use it to buy drugs. Interesting,
Speaker 1: why don't use any of that stuff? And I don't
Speaker 1: mean to pick on just crackheads. If you're a junkie,
Speaker 1: same thing. Sure, if you have a gambling habit, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've man, we got we got a lot of crap
Speaker 1: from a cup. The people by using about using the
Speaker 1: word junkie, Yeah, it's pretty derogatory if you think about it.
Speaker 1: I guess, well, but it's a word with a definition
Speaker 1: which means something, and that's what it means. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like we were just like slagging people. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I get what they're saying, though. You're saying like it's
Speaker 1: just such a dismissive term of anyone who's addicted. It
Speaker 1: really kind of flies in the face of the disease
Speaker 1: model of addiction. Yeah. Yeah, so I had to talk
Speaker 1: to the people who call us out on man, I
Speaker 1: get it. But the point is tied is now a
Speaker 1: currency as like remember our prison episode we talked about
Speaker 1: how honey buns are currency. Yeah, same thing, right, cigarettes, yeah, currency,
Speaker 1: deer skins, Yeah, those were currency once. That's where we
Speaker 1: get the word bucks from. I think what you're getting at. Oh,
Speaker 1: I can't wait to get to that stuff later. Okay, etymology,
Speaker 1: I love that stuff. Um. I think what you're trying
Speaker 1: to say is that or what you are saying is
Speaker 1: that currency is nothing more or than a medium of
Speaker 1: exchange and a substitute for something a good or a service. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is an agreed upon that's the key. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: got to be agreed upon. Yeah, you can't be like
Speaker 1: I'll give you five Lincoln logs for a car. Well
Speaker 1: that's what you do when you're a kid, right, And
Speaker 1: you go, I don't think I want Linkol logs, and
Speaker 1: everybody goes, oh you do. Right. But if the other
Speaker 1: person says those Lincoln I don't want Lincoln logs, then
Speaker 1: what you have are Lincol logs, not a currency, because
Speaker 1: it has to be mutually agreed upon, like you say,
Speaker 1: like dollar bills. Yeah. I have gone off on this
Speaker 1: on our show about the amazing fact that this paper
Speaker 1: we have all agreed as is worth something, and that
Speaker 1: as the only reason it's worth something that people dedicate
Speaker 1: their lives to pursuing paper is as as ephemeral as
Speaker 1: a cloud. Almost. Yeah, not the greatest analogy you I've made,
Speaker 1: but it's still kind of works, all right. So let's
Speaker 1: let's talk olden days and currency as a substitute for things. Um,
Speaker 1: what currency did was solved the problem. It allowed you
Speaker 1: to give change and make change. Yeah, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a big one. Because back in the day, if you
Speaker 1: had a bushel of corn and you wanted a chicken,
Speaker 1: you would go to your neighbor. Well, you had to
Speaker 1: find somebody they had a chicken that wanted corn. So
Speaker 1: that's the first problem. That's a problem. But what if
Speaker 1: you do find someone, You're like, great, my neighbor's got
Speaker 1: a chicken and I've got this corn. He wants this corn.
Speaker 1: He wants the corn, but he says, you know what,
Speaker 1: this chicken is worth a lot more than that corn.
Speaker 1: Somebody's getting a bad deal until you can make change. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because what if corn you could that's not the best
Speaker 1: example because you could take out some of the corn.
Speaker 1: Let's say you can't chop a chicken. Yeah, Well, you
Speaker 1: got a cow, your neighbor has a chicken, and it's
Speaker 1: not an even trade. But you just need one chicken
Speaker 1: and your neighbor just needs one cow. You can't make
Speaker 1: change like that. You can't make change. So that's one
Speaker 1: of the first roles that currency its fulfilled, was a
Speaker 1: way to make change, to make trade more equal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and before that, I think there were a lot of
Speaker 1: bad deals going down out of desperation. You know, like
Speaker 1: if your family really needed that chicken for a reason,
Speaker 1: you might end up taking a bad deal just because
Speaker 1: you need that chicken. You give your cow away for
Speaker 1: that chicken. Yeah, and then your family would berate you.
Speaker 1: It's right, where's the milk, honey? Yeah, this is like
Speaker 1: the magic beans incident 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 a mass wealth. Because you can
Speaker 1: harvest all the corn you want, but that corn is
Speaker 1: gonna go bad unless you can find a way to
Speaker 1: trade it in. A barn full of rotten corn does
Speaker 1: no one any good. It doesn't make you any richer
Speaker 1: like in in practice, practically speaking, you would be an
Speaker 1: extraordinarily 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 junk. 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 work 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. Yeah,
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 work. 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 Coco,
Speaker 1: beans were valuable and so they use those as money.
Speaker 1: But um. One of the roblems 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 cocao. They
Speaker 1: love the stuff. They made chocolate out of it. It
Speaker 1: was the elixir of the gods, kind of stuff. Drank
Speaker 1: it right, Yeah. Mina Zuma drank like twenty or forty
Speaker 1: cups of it to day until he died from drinking
Speaker 1: too much chocolate. Um. But the canky sitters who came
Speaker 1: didn't value cocow beans at all, So rather than trade,
Speaker 1: they just took everything yeah and dumped the cacao beans
Speaker 1: because it was worthless to them. Yeah, but that is
Speaker 1: a good example of a commodity based currency, like even
Speaker 1: if even if everything else falls apart, that cocw beans
Speaker 1: still has value and that you can make chocolate out
Speaker 1: of it. In the society, chocolate is valued ergo they
Speaker 1: value the cacao beans, so you can use it as currency.
Speaker 1: Plus in this case, cacaw beans um are easy to carry,
Speaker 1: so they're portable, and they're plentiful and small, so you
Speaker 1: can make change with them. Yeah, but not everything was
Speaker 1: the cacao bean. In commodity currency, a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: is perishable more perishable um, a lot of like cattle
Speaker 1: is super bulky. You can't carry on a bunch of cows, goats,
Speaker 1: goats um. But nevertheless, that is a form of commodity currency.
Speaker 1: Has 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 then little goat is gonna bounce in the room.
Speaker 1: Clip clop, you're gonna go. What the have you ever
Speaker 1: seen be the Lamb? I showed you that, right, dude,
Speaker 1: of that's probably my top five if you don't know,
Speaker 1: Be the Lamb where into YouTube? Now? Oh was it
Speaker 1: a lamb? I think so. I thought it was a
Speaker 1: pigmy goat. I think it's a lamb. Jerry says, Lamb. Alright,
Speaker 1: I win. Alright, here's some cacao beans. Nice. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: Let's see if we can get the mojo back again.
Speaker 1: All right, the mojo is still flowing because our message
Speaker 1: break in reality, was only two seconds long. That's our
Speaker 1: dirty secret. Coins is our next form of currency. And
Speaker 1: they were first minute a minute in Lydia, which is
Speaker 1: modern Turkey, and they're king uh Crosis or crotus. So
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna make these little small metal ingots.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna amblem with our emblem and it's six ford
Speaker 1: BC and this is called coins and it's worth something.
Speaker 1: And the Greek said this is great, and the Romans
Speaker 1: said this is great. And they're we're gonna make ours
Speaker 1: out of silver and gold. So it's actually worth something.
Speaker 1: Although when you think about it, that's just you know,
Speaker 1: 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 currency is a fiat currency. Fiat currency
Speaker 1: means that it has valued by fiat, like um, the
Speaker 1: fiat of the king, a decree um, and it says
Speaker 1: the government or the king says this has value. It's
Speaker 1: it's n gold, it's valuable, so go trade it as
Speaker 1: such by fiat. Right. Yeah, if you think about the
Speaker 1: only things that really have real value or like food
Speaker 1: and water pretty much, you know, like you can make
Speaker 1: the case that a commodity based currency like cocao beans
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily a fiat currency because it does have inherent
Speaker 1: value that anybody can use. But gold old is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not really that valuable. It's not really that useful,
Speaker 1: especially in like a pre industrial society. I wonder if
Speaker 1: gold first became valuable because it was shiny and and
Speaker 1: it 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. Yeah, even today it's
Speaker 1: not that useful. I mean, they use it in some
Speaker 1: solid state electronics and things, but it's not it's more
Speaker 1: valuable simply because it's gold. Yeah, so even if it's
Speaker 1: backed with gold, it's technically still a fiat currency. I've
Speaker 1: never heard that term f I A T. So what
Speaker 1: does the fiat car all about? Does 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 Ums says no. Yeah. Grabster says that it happened
Speaker 1: about the same time it did in the West fifth
Speaker 1: century BC. They started out oddly with tools like knives,
Speaker 1: shapes as currency with little holes drilled in them so
Speaker 1: they could keep it on a string, and they just
Speaker 1: shrank over the earth until it was about the size
Speaker 1: of a coin, right, I thought was odd, But they
Speaker 1: kept the hole in there. So even until like the
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century, the Chinese coins still we're just these
Speaker 1: little round coins with a hole in the middle so
Speaker 1: you could string them on a string. Yeah, that's because
Speaker 1: they didn't have the little coin dispenser on the hip.
Speaker 1: They would have thought of that, which is surprising because
Speaker 1: the Chinese invented practically everything except the coin dispenser, the
Speaker 1: hip mounted coin dispenser. Did they even still make those?
Speaker 1: Sure they do. I'll bet all right, I'm gonna buy one. Um.
Speaker 1: If not, Archie McPhee probably makes it in an ironic version.
Speaker 1: So who's that they make? Um, you've seen all their stuff.
Speaker 1: They make like funny like they were the original, probably
Speaker 1: like bacon air freshener, car freshener. They make stuff like that.
Speaker 1: They make his head, gotcha. They outfit Um, they all
Speaker 1: their stuffs in urban outfitters, probably in the chakey section. Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, I hate them. Then. Uh So, one of
Speaker 1: the big impacts of coins was now the government actually
Speaker 1: controlled the money supply and could manipulate it and say
Speaker 1: what it's worth. And Roman emperors were dumb and said,
Speaker 1: you know what, We're just gonna reduce your amount of
Speaker 1: precious metal in some of these because that makes us richer.
Speaker 1: But that devalued things such that it ended up being
Speaker 1: one of the factors in their downfall. Yeah, they didn't
Speaker 1: quite understand now it worked, and it took thousands of
Speaker 1: years for anybody to figure out really how it worked.
Speaker 1: But basically if you still know how it works kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we have a better grasp than
Speaker 1: the early Roman emperors. Yeah, that's because they would say, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I've got a ton of gold, and my predecessors would
Speaker 1: make ten thousand gold coins out of a ton, but I,
Speaker 1: being as clever as I am, I'm going to make
Speaker 1: twenty thousand gold coins out of this ton and double
Speaker 1: my money. But rather than double the money, it devalued
Speaker 1: the currency and led to the decline of the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1: That's right, like you said, But that's how Yeah, and
Speaker 1: after that, um, it took a while for coins to
Speaker 1: come back in fashion, all the way to the Renaissance
Speaker 1: because in the Dark Ages, because of a lot of
Speaker 1: that uh stuff, people didn't trust coins right, and for
Speaker 1: good reason, because there was a someone behind it who
Speaker 1: could decree the percentage of gold in that coin. The
Speaker 1: thing is is um and we'll get to this later.
Speaker 1: The powers that be can decree value, but ultimately it's
Speaker 1: up to the general public, the people who are trading
Speaker 1: in these things, to determine really how valuable they are.
Speaker 1: There's something called perception of value that has to do
Speaker 1: with just how valuable a currency is or not we'll
Speaker 1: talk about in a minute, but that's what happened in Rome. Uh.
Speaker 1: Next up, we have paper money or is they call
Speaker 1: it folding money here in the South, and um they
Speaker 1: paper money was first developed by the Chinese as well,
Speaker 1: and they used um, like you said, a buckskin, sometimes bark,
Speaker 1: parchment and it was a bill of payment. And leather
Speaker 1: was also used in Europe around eleven undred, which didn't
Speaker 1: really catch on then. No, I think leather money be
Speaker 1: kind of cool though. Leather money, sure, if you know,
Speaker 1: if you hate animals, what better way to kill more
Speaker 1: of them? I wonder how much a cow would have
Speaker 1: been worth then, yeah, because you while they were using
Speaker 1: the skin for other stuff anyway, good point though. Uh.
Speaker 1: In Sweden in six sixty one they issued paper money,
Speaker 1: but they didn't quite understand it either and flooded the
Speaker 1: market with it, which made it almost worthless as well. Out, Um,
Speaker 1: I get the the I get the desire though, like, oh,
Speaker 1: everyone says this stuff is worth something, let's just print
Speaker 1: a ton of it exactly. Yeah. Um, So it didn't
Speaker 1: catch on after the Swedish experiment of the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: but it didn't take too much longer. It was the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century when paper money finally did catch on, and
Speaker 1: it 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 for you.
Speaker 1: You had what what it amounts to a promissory note
Speaker 1: 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 nineteen 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. Yeah, but there
Speaker 1: was a stock somewhere in the world that you could
Speaker 1: trade your paper money for that value in gold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could go somewhere to the gold trader. E let's
Speaker 1: say here I want all this money in gold. Did
Speaker 1: you know that's what the the Wizard of Oz is about.
Speaker 1: It's an allegory for the gold standard. Oh man, it's
Speaker 1: depending on who you ask, it's about ten different things.
Speaker 1: It's an allegory, a populist allegory for the gold standards.
Speaker 1: I just posted an article about like ten different theories
Speaker 1: on what the Wizard of Odds means on our Facebook page.
Speaker 1: Mine is right and yours is right, and then everyone
Speaker 1: else is wrong. Thank you. That's all I ever want
Speaker 1: to hear from you, I know. Um. So, now we're
Speaker 1: on to E money, which is uh. It seems like
Speaker 1: something super new, but it actually came about after World
Speaker 1: War Two when UM banks started recording their information of
Speaker 1: the day onto magnetic reels and taking it to the
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve Bank, and all of a sudden they said,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't need these silly ten dollar bills
Speaker 1: because we can just record this all electronically. And all
Speaker 1: it took then was a wire connection and trust for
Speaker 1: people to trust that this really is money, even though
Speaker 1: I'm not seeing any money right right then. That is
Speaker 1: the real distinction of it, because with an electronic transfer,
Speaker 1: originally you're transferring information about money, like I will I
Speaker 1: have a hundred thousand dollars over here I officially give
Speaker 1: to you, and so that that electronic transfer becomes a
Speaker 1: promissory note in and of itself. Um. And they figured
Speaker 1: out that they can do this after they realized that
Speaker 1: money in and of its self isn't valuable, so we
Speaker 1: can just do this whole thing electronically. And like you said,
Speaker 1: they did have hundred thousand dollar notes and apparently there's
Speaker 1: some in circulation still, there's a couple hundred of them
Speaker 1: in circulation. They had five hundred, one thousand, ten thousand,
Speaker 1: and hundred thousand dollar bills. There's a really neat mental
Speaker 1: floss article that you can read called a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollar Bill, The Story behind large denomination currency, and it
Speaker 1: talks all about that. But it was prior to the
Speaker 1: magnetic tapes that were passed from bank to bank or
Speaker 1: that recorded this information. And this is how banks would
Speaker 1: settle up transfers through ten thousand, hundred thousand dollar bills. Yea.
Speaker 1: And the hundred thousand UM has Woodrow Wilson on it
Speaker 1: and they only made those for about three weeks. But um,
Speaker 1: that was never like in the public. That was just
Speaker 1: between banks, Like, no, it was never in circulation. That's
Speaker 1: still there's still around from what I understand though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was um in nineteen I'm sorry. In two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: there were less than four hundred five dollar bills, thousand
Speaker 1: dollar bills, five thousand dollar bills, and ten thousand dollar
Speaker 1: bills um, all between like three and four hundred still
Speaker 1: in circulation, which I thought was pretty interesting. And they're
Speaker 1: usually worth frame now, you know, but there were way
Speaker 1: more than their face value. Um. This mental plus article
Speaker 1: points out that if you have a pristine ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollar bill, yeah, 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 they just printed it for three weeks? Would would he? Um?
Speaker 1: I wonder why he get that honor? Yeah? I don't know,
Speaker 1: because he was money. He didn't even know it. So uh,
Speaker 1: with electronic money, another few things really helps submit that
Speaker 1: as a as a viable thing. One was the first
Speaker 1: credit card and Steen fifty Diners Club said, you know what,
Speaker 1: rich businessman, here's a piece of plastic, so you can
Speaker 1: impress your friends by not even carrying cash and pay
Speaker 1: for whatever you want with this thing, and then we'll
Speaker 1: charge you some interest and then you'll pay us back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And we got even further from the commodity by saying,
Speaker 1: now you're not even using cash. Yeah, we're using electronic
Speaker 1: promisory notes by charging this that's the promissory note. And
Speaker 1: then they realize, hey, this shouldn't be just for rich dudes,
Speaker 1: because we can financially cripple everybody exactly. This interesting is
Speaker 1: really neat. So everyone should have a credit card, and
Speaker 1: today there's over two hundred million visas, which started in
Speaker 1: n h 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 a while 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 is 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 though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's United States at least. Remember the early days of
Speaker 1: internet purchases. How distrustful. We all were, Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: putting my credit card, I'm not typing that thing in
Speaker 1: and it never occurred to that. We hand it to
Speaker 1: like a waiter or you know, whoever that can do
Speaker 1: anything with it. And then it finally just became less
Speaker 1: important just because so many people were doing it, that
Speaker 1: the chances of your credit card being stolen, um, we're lower.
Speaker 1: Coupled with the fact that it became evident that credit
Speaker 1: card companies were willing to just like wipe clean that's accrude,
Speaker 1: like that illegally, Yeah, made people a lot a lot
Speaker 1: more trusting of it. I guess. Yeah. I had a
Speaker 1: lady in front of me this grocery store the day
Speaker 1: that wrote a check and I was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: were just like I know, I felt like a jerk
Speaker 1: because I had a wait longer minute, but I did
Speaker 1: want to say, like, you know, there's a better way
Speaker 1: of doing that now checks And I can't remember the
Speaker 1: last check I wrote. It's been years and years and
Speaker 1: years since I've written a check for me. It's usually
Speaker 1: like like a government thing like a tag or something,
Speaker 1: tag tax or something. Yeah, I do all that with
Speaker 1: my card too. Uh. And then of course, if you
Speaker 1: want to talk about the bleeding edge of electronic money,
Speaker 1: um e g. Bitcoin and that kind of thing, should
Speaker 1: go listen to our bitcoin episode, which we're told was
Speaker 1: pretty good. Yeah. I think even the guys from pot
Speaker 1: on Pod reviewed our show and they listened to the
Speaker 1: midpoint episode and said we did a good job of
Speaker 1: explaining it. Yeah. So, Chuck, we're talking about the gold
Speaker 1: standard and how that's what the Wizard of Oz is about.
Speaker 1: And um, prior to that, with the gold standard, it
Speaker 1: was I mean, inflation happened. The price of gold fluctuated,
Speaker 1: so therefore the price of anything pegged to it, like
Speaker 1: the dollar, would fluctuate too. With when we abandoned the
Speaker 1: gold standard officially in nine one, but prior to that,
Speaker 1: I think in the thirties is when it really started. Um,
Speaker 1: we really took a huge leap of faith because there's
Speaker 1: nothing backing it anymore, Like there's a huge it's a
Speaker 1: myth that you can take your dollar bill and turn
Speaker 1: it in for gold. They will, some guys in white
Speaker 1: coats will come and lock you up in a padded
Speaker 1: room for a little while. They said, you can come
Speaker 1: and buy this gold ring with your cash. Pretty much
Speaker 1: you can buy gold bullion with it, but you cannot, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and we're going to charge you some fees for that too. Um.
Speaker 1: So once we abandoned the gold standard, it was a
Speaker 1: big leap of faith because um, as Milton Freedman put it, quote,
Speaker 1: the pieces of green paper have value because everybody thinks
Speaker 1: they have value. And as long as we all think
Speaker 1: together and believe together, they will stay valuable. But there
Speaker 1: are certain times, there's certain occasions and events when we
Speaker 1: all believe that things become a little less valuable, that
Speaker 1: currency is a little less valuable than at other times.
Speaker 1: So this perception of value can have an impact on
Speaker 1: the value of currency. And the Grabster gives a pretty
Speaker 1: good example. It's when we deflate or devalue currency relative
Speaker 1: to other currencies, which will do sometimes because we want
Speaker 1: to attract that currency's native investors over here in the US.
Speaker 1: So like if right now you can buy five francs
Speaker 1: to the dollar, euros five euros to the dollar, um,
Speaker 1: and we say, what, we want to encourage more investment
Speaker 1: in Europe, So we're gonna let the dollar devalue um,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna make it so it's equal to three
Speaker 1: euros and then we'll stabilize it. Well, that will encourage
Speaker 1: more people in Europe to invest in the United States
Speaker 1: because the Euro now has more buying power relative to
Speaker 1: the dollar. But everyone in the in the United States
Speaker 1: because wtf, we got all these dollars and now it's
Speaker 1: worth less because you just told us that you're going
Speaker 1: to make it worth less relative to the euro. Nothing
Speaker 1: really happened to the dollar that everybody agreed literally overnight
Speaker 1: that the dollar is less valuable now because it was devalued.
Speaker 1: That's one way that that currency can fluctuate these days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wish I had a better understanding of when people
Speaker 1: say what the dollar is worth. Sometimes it just makes
Speaker 1: my head spin. I have one for you. You're gonna
Speaker 1: love this, man. Let's hear it. The Big Mac Index.
Speaker 1: It's it's exactly what you just said. If you want
Speaker 1: an understanding of it. There is a guy in six
Speaker 1: who wrote in The Economist basically the Big Mac Index,
Speaker 1: and and it says we cover this in uh one
Speaker 1: of them. We may have done it in their stuff
Speaker 1: super stuff gut to the economy. Then that was eight
Speaker 1: years ago, though it was, But what so we'll go
Speaker 1: over it again. The big Mac index says the price
Speaker 1: of an end of a big mac relative to the
Speaker 1: price of a big mac in another country. Right, So
Speaker 1: it's basically saying you can, and it's tongue in cheek,
Speaker 1: but it actually does kind of work. You can you
Speaker 1: can show the buying power, the purchasing power of one
Speaker 1: UM currency relative to another based on how much a
Speaker 1: big mac costs in each country. And once you once
Speaker 1: you see it and and look at it like that,
Speaker 1: you go to the economists and type in the big
Speaker 1: Mac index and it'll bring this up. And it's an
Speaker 1: interactive scale UM which makes it awesome, and you understand
Speaker 1: relative purchasing power. Well, I should spend some time that side,
Speaker 1: thank you. It will make me hungry. So then the
Speaker 1: other way that things can devalue is with supply, and
Speaker 1: that is just basically supplying demand. Like when there's a
Speaker 1: lot more money available, it by nature becomes less valuable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: demand is high prices go up. Demand supplies high prices
Speaker 1: go down, right, So that's inflation and deflation that goes up,
Speaker 1: it goes down. Okay, I guess we should answer this.
Speaker 1: Are you watching the Simpsons every episode marathon? I've tuned
Speaker 1: in something here and there. But what I've really enjoyed
Speaker 1: is the influx of articles about like the best seasons,
Speaker 1: the best episodes. It's really like a trip down memory lane.
Speaker 1: I do not have f x X and so therefore
Speaker 1: I'm bereft. Yeah, but you've seen them all anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be so nice to see him again like this,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I mean they're running the NonStop. Like
Speaker 1: you wake up at three am, it's on. I know,
Speaker 1: I don't think I wake up at three am and
Speaker 1: realize that I'm missing a Simpsons right then, Well you
Speaker 1: caught Bed Goes Up, Bed Goes Down on. That's because
Speaker 1: I love the Simpson exactly. So. Uh. We talked about
Speaker 1: inflation and deflation, but um, if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about that, you should check out how much Money
Speaker 1: is there in the world, are super Stuff, Guide to
Speaker 1: the Economy, stag Inflation. Those are all some good episodes
Speaker 1: we've done on that kind of thing. Yeah. Um, and
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, you know, I talked about I can
Speaker 1: see how you might be incentivised to just print loads
Speaker 1: of money if you want more of it. Um, and
Speaker 1: 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. Um, they had I mean, this
Speaker 1: is amazing stuff. I think Zimbabwe beat them eventually, didn't they.
Speaker 1: I couldn't remember. It'swere 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 and war reparations about thirty three billion
Speaker 1: dollars in like, they didn't have that kind of money,
Speaker 1: so they said, well, let's just print a bunch of it. Uh,
Speaker 1: and see what happened. Um. It's not gonna be backed
Speaker 1: by any kind of commodity. Um. And it resulted in
Speaker 1: hyper inflation to the extent where in nineteen twenty three
Speaker 1: it was called, uh, the hyper inflation of the Weimer
Speaker 1: Republic from June one to January. It's because they funded
Speaker 1: the war through borrowing. Only they didn't like raise taxes
Speaker 1: to pay for the war. They literally borrowed money to
Speaker 1: pay for World War One, and it resulted in eventually
Speaker 1: forty two billion billion with a b German marks was
Speaker 1: equal to one penny of US money, and I didn't
Speaker 1: 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 wondered, 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 Deutsche marks no the um
Speaker 1: rent rent a mark, and this is our new money.
Speaker 1: Not all that money is no good to start, but
Speaker 1: this 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 we're backing this money. And it worked and it
Speaker 1: turned around almost overnight to the point where a U.
Speaker 1: S Dollar was worth four point to rent a marks
Speaker 1: but a four point two billion, and I guess everyone
Speaker 1: just got on boards, all right. That old money is
Speaker 1: no good wallpaper your walls with it, and now we
Speaker 1: have new money, you know. UM. A lot of historians
Speaker 1: credit that really difficult period that Germany was put through,
Speaker 1: um or put itself through, depending on who you ask,
Speaker 1: after World War One is the reason why fascism was
Speaker 1: allowed to take hold there. I believe it in the
Speaker 1: lead up to World War two because I mean when
Speaker 1: I say it's stabilized, its stabilized the money overnight, but
Speaker 1: it still wasn't like they were still in bad shape.
Speaker 1: You know, it took a while to dig dig out
Speaker 1: of that. Did you see that thing I sent you
Speaker 1: on um um Cowry shells, Oh yeah, it's a little bit.
Speaker 1: Cowrie shells are sea snail shells. They're little, tiny white
Speaker 1: shells that look porcelain and literally for about two thousand
Speaker 1: years UM they were used as currency throughout the world,
Speaker 1: and they came almost exclusively from the Maldives, UM. And
Speaker 1: they would like, if you were a trader, you would
Speaker 1: go down to the Maldives, you would buy about a
Speaker 1: million uh cowarie shells for one gold dinar. Then you
Speaker 1: go back to India or go to India and you
Speaker 1: would sell ten thousand of them for a gold dinar,
Speaker 1: so you could just make a ton of money overnight.
Speaker 1: And then the further and further away they got from
Speaker 1: the Maldives, and the closer and closer to China they got,
Speaker 1: which is a country that used these things like crazy,
Speaker 1: as they were worth more and more. Yeah, and the Maldives,
Speaker 1: it's just like you just scoop up baskets full of them,
Speaker 1: and they were not nearly as valuable, but as you
Speaker 1: got away from the Maldives, they grew more and more valuable,
Speaker 1: and they were used as currency literally until the mid
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. I mean they started and we have the
Speaker 1: earliest reference in about three fifty b C. And in
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties is when the the currency finally collapsed,
Speaker 1: just because there were so many of them on the
Speaker 1: market that people would, you know, they would pay using
Speaker 1: five in cowery shells and you'd have to count out
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand cowery shells. And didnt they use them
Speaker 1: because they were like pretty and they were hardy and
Speaker 1: like didn't break really easy. And yeah, 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 Maltives, more valuable like in China. So
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 v v i
Speaker 1: e h. Interesting right, yeah. Speaking of shells, you know,
Speaker 1: I believe Pacific Northwest tribes used whop them, whamp them yea,
Speaker 1: which were white shells um and the phrase shell out
Speaker 1: comes from that, like when you pay somebody in shells,
Speaker 1: you were shelling out. I wonder if that's where clams
Speaker 1: comes from. Probably, what's your funny word for money? Beans, bones, rock, samoleons, samoleians.
Speaker 1: I tried to look up Simoleon, because I think everyone
Speaker 1: knows that's the cartoon, right currency, But I couldn't find anything.
Speaker 1: It kept defaulting and saying, do you mean Somali money?
Speaker 1: I was like, no, I mean Samoleon. 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. I could ask our friend Jessica.
Speaker 1: She might know. You saw Charles Schultz's granddaughter emailed us. 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? Right exactly? Um? Do you want to know
Speaker 1: the atomology of Semolean? Do you have it? Yeah? Man?
Speaker 1: How did my Google uh skills not pan out? I
Speaker 1: am proud of you, Chuck yeah for not saying yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so Semolean is spelled s I M O L
Speaker 1: e O N. It's an English word, all right. That's
Speaker 1: where I got sidetracked. They think that it is a
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century blend of simone, which is apparently a
Speaker 1: French word for dollar and Napoleon. Really yeah, and why
Speaker 1: was it exclusive to cartoons? I don't know, but they
Speaker 1: think it came from New Orleans in the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: So simone um was either dollar or sixpence coin. It
Speaker 1: was a British slang and Napoleon, so I guess that's
Speaker 1: where Semolean came from. Would you get that? What's the
Speaker 1: website words sense dot eu? All right? I believe that
Speaker 1: dot eu that says at all. They have a clean
Speaker 1: look to their website, which makes me believe that they
Speaker 1: know what they're talking about. Yeah, when you look at
Speaker 1: a website, you can get a lot of information about
Speaker 1: its accuracy, just if it looks like a MySpace page
Speaker 1: from um, I hope my space is around in nineteen
Speaker 1: because the penance will right in. Yeah, it wasn't my
Speaker 1: space then my Space came about and the word dollar itself.
Speaker 1: UM account in Czechoslovakia and a town called well, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter where it was. He started minting silver coins
Speaker 1: in fifteen nineteen and they were called uh Taller Grossian,
Speaker 1: which was shortened to Taller's and Taller eventually became dollar
Speaker 1: in the United States today. And we talked in the
Speaker 1: Salt episode about how the word salary came from assault.
Speaker 1: So I looked again because I think he said that
Speaker 1: that wasn't true, that that's a myth, and it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily true. That it's a myth from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: it's just unproven. So in the first century, Pliny the Elder,
Speaker 1: the Roman historian, says a good beer too, that that's
Speaker 1: what the words salt came from. Was they used to
Speaker 1: pay soldiers in antiquity in salt. But he doesn't back
Speaker 1: it up and they can't verify it. That's a good story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at the very least is about a two thousand year
Speaker 1: old story. So let's go with you. It's true. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had the history teacher in college, my best history
Speaker 1: teacher ever, that said, never let facts get in the
Speaker 1: way of a good story. I've heard that he was
Speaker 1: a good guy. I can't remember his name. He might
Speaker 1: have had him. He was man. He was great. One
Speaker 1: of my first big inspirational teachers in college. That is,
Speaker 1: I got you so much so that I don't remember
Speaker 1: his name. That one guy. Uh. If you want to
Speaker 1: learn more about currency, you should listen to any number
Speaker 1: of our episodes on currency, including this one again. Or
Speaker 1: you can type currency into the search part how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com. It will bring up this article. And
Speaker 1: since I said search parts, time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this rare shout out. We don't do
Speaker 1: this a lot um, but I'm gonna do it today
Speaker 1: because I like the cut of this dude's jib. My
Speaker 1: name is Jared Bagnal exclamation point. I'm writing to see
Speaker 1: if you could do a tribute to my wife, a
Speaker 1: Bree Bagnal your listener mail. I'm a huge fan of
Speaker 1: you guys, but my wife is most definitely your number
Speaker 1: one fan. You can safely say that a few hundred
Speaker 1: of your listeners could be attributed to her alone. She
Speaker 1: has dozens of people hooked on s Y s K
Speaker 1: and from them a dozen each. She's so excited every
Speaker 1: Tuesday and Thursday that your podcast comes out. She tells
Speaker 1: everyone about them. She's the nicest person in the world, caring, sweet, shy,
Speaker 1: and deserve some recognition for being so awesome. Our one
Speaker 1: year anniversary is coming up. Got married in Jamaica, and
Speaker 1: though it was an amazing experience, she's obamed that we
Speaker 1: couldn't go with our family. UM, I would like to see.
Speaker 1: I would like to see if you could dedicate your
Speaker 1: listener portion to her into our anniversary so everyone can
Speaker 1: know that she's great. That's pretty nice, Chuck, Thanks Josh,
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry. Um did I spell that right? No?
Speaker 1: You did not? How do you spell it? J e
Speaker 1: r r Y. Let's just get it on the record
Speaker 1: if we haven't before, j E R I, that's right. Um.
Speaker 1: For the five percent of people who listen to listener mail,
Speaker 1: hey guys, this would be a great surprise for her
Speaker 1: while running into your podcast to hear this tribute. So
Speaker 1: Jared number two fan writing on behalf of Bree number
Speaker 1: one fan, Happy anniversary. Way to go, way to make
Speaker 1: it to the one year mark. I wish you many
Speaker 1: many more years of happiness to come. We both do. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm speaking for Josh, although thanks man. Do you wish them?
Speaker 1: Of course I do? Okay, you're like, I'm glad for them? Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to take your chances to see if
Speaker 1: Chuck will give you or your loved on a 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 at our home on the web, Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radios. How stuff Works for more podcasts
Speaker 1: for my heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.