Characteristics of money

[pmbug]

I used to have a link to a .PDF produced by the Philadelphia Fed that talked about the characteristics of money, but I lost it some time ago. It's fine to try and educate people about ancient wisdom that people understood for millennia, but if it comes from goldbug sites, Joe Sixpack doesn't give it too much credence. So it's nice when you can cite The Federal Reserve saying it...

...
Money functions as (1) a medium of exchange, (2) a unit of account and (3) a store of value.
...
But what features does your money need? Six characteristics have been identified: Money must be durable, portable, divisible, scarce, uniform and acceptable.
...

https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/educate/everyday/money.pdf

h/t: https://lonestarwhitehouse.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-dallas-federal-reserve-explains.html

Also, St. Louis Fed mentions it too:

https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/economic-lowdown-podcast-series/episode-9-functions-of-money

 

[rblong2us]

I reckon we havent had money for a long time.
It was quietly phased out and replaced by a belief system that the banksters invented and controlled. Credit based fiat.
If they werent so greedy it could have lasted a thousand years .......

 

[pmbug]

...
If they werent so greedy it could have lasted a thousand years .......

I'm not so sure about that. The primary justification for abandoning sound money is to allow governments flexibility with (over)spending. Once you give them that means, there isn't any sufficient force to constrain them from malfeasance and we get what we get. I think that historically, the average lifespan of a fiat currency is typically way less than 100 years:

https://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/08/average-life-expectancy-for-fiat.html

 

[CiscoKid]

I'm not so sure about that. The primary justification for abandoning sound money is to allow governments flexibility with (over)spending. Once you give them that means, there isn't any sufficient force to constrain them from malfeasance and we get what we get. I think that historically, the average lifespan of a fiat currency is typically way less than 100 years:

https://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/08/average-life-expectancy-for-fiat.html

And this is what bothers me. Doesn't stop me from stacking, but it does enter my mind from time to time.

 

[Casey Jones]

Listening to a Dave Collum interview...he's the Cornell professor who started making news ten years ago with his sardonic Year-In-Review write-up. ZeroHedge started running it (he ran it in the Cornell student newspaper prior to that). Since then, all the finance and libertarian guys...Luongo, Kunstler, Gammon, Chris Irons...have had him on as a regular guest. He's a good listen, even though I have major issues with some of his takes.

But he got to talking about money, and "money-ness." Things that aren't money but have some of the attributes, or some of the potentials to change your lifestyle...have the same power as money.

His obvious example: If you have a million in T-bills...you don't have money, but you don't live like you're making $50k a year. You have resources.

The same can be said about marketable land. To a lesser extent, it may be true of home appreciation. Although it's much harder to actually realize the gains, and far easier to wind up in over your head from failure to behave as your income IS, not as your unrealized gain in value shows.

Bitcoin, the same, for the short time it's been around. Small-scale, it's easy to realize the gains. You bought five bitcoins at $60 ten years ago. A year ago you wanted cash, and you sold one for $60k...and bought a home with 40-percent down.

Not a bad return.

What would happen if all bitcoin holders tried to take advantage of the money-ness of code? You'd see another dramatic drop, maybe to nothing.

Now, let's go to the ultimate fiat - the FRN dollar. THAT is not money, by Mises' definition. It's CURRENCY; and unfortunately, legal tender.

What happens when the whole world wakes the F up and realizes that it's just green paper, or numbers on a spreadsheet...worth as much as a Cuban peso? COLLAPSE.

It won't happen all at once, at least not until the panic gets truly underway. But it WILL happen. The FRN's Reserve Currency status has held it off; but it's just a matter of so many international players finding it PROFITABLE to pretend the Emperor has on fine clothing.