The Little Money Book

By David Boyle

2003

First Published

3.75

Average Rating

192

Number of Pages

5H51M

Audio Length

They say money is the root of all evil. That's debatable, but one thing that's not is that money and its attendant enterprises—buying, selling, lending, borrowing, credit cards, the stock market and banking—is an inescapable component of the fabric of modern life. How did this come to be? Money and the complex system that makes it work is a manmade product that we invented and yet, like Frankenstein, it has us all in its grip. From the poorest to the wealthiest, we worry about money. This highly accessible and easytoread synthesis of complex subjects asks some of the obvious questions about money and finance that few of us stop to think about. For instance, what is the real "value" of money? Well, astonishingly, nobody agrees. But most people seem to accept that it is lent into existence by the commercial banks. When you stash money in the bank, they must keep around 8 percent of that loan on deposit—in case there's a run on the bank—but all the rest is lent out again many times over. In other words, most of our mortgages and bank loans are created as if by magic by a stroke of the pen. That's the strange truth behind modern money. We don't mine it, we don't find it on a beach, it bears no relation to anything real, but still some people have vast amounts of it and some people have none at all. And we hardly ever talk about it.

Avg Rating

3.75

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

13%

4 STARS

63%

3 STARS

19%

2 STARS

1 STARS

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Author

David Boyle

Author · 35 books

David Boyle is the author of Blondel’s Song: The Capture, Imprisonment and Ransom of Richard the Lionheart, and a series of books about history, social change and the future. His book Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life helped put the search for authenticity on the agenda as a social phenomenon. The Tyranny of Numbers and The Sum of Our Discontent predicted the backlash against the government’s target culture. Funny Money launched the time banks movement in the UK. David is an associate of the new economics foundation, the pioneering think-tank in London, and has been at the heart of the effort to introduce time banks to Britain as a critical element of public service reform - since when the movement has grown to more than 100 projects in the UK. He is also the founder of the London Time Bank network and co-founder of Time Banks UK. He writes about the future of volunteering, cities and business. His work on the future of money has also been covered in books and pamphlets like Why London Needs its own Currency (nef, 2000), Virtual Currencies (Financial Times, 2000), The Money Changers: Currency reform from Aristotle to e-cash (Earthscan, 2002) and The Little Money Book (Alastair Sawday, 2003). He has written for many national newspapers and magazines, and edited a range of magazines including Town & Country Planning and Liberal Democrat News. He is the editor of Radical Economics. He lives in Crystal Palace, in south London, with Sarah and Robin (two years old). He is a member of the Federal Policy Committee of the Liberal Democrats and he stood for Parliament in Regents Park and Kensington North in 2001.