<b>Word of the day</b> - <b>Fiat money</b> is money that has value only becau...

Terrence Miao - 2011-11-29 08:30:11+1100 - Updated: 2011-11-29 08:35:46+1100

Word of the day - Fiat money is money that has value only because of government regulation or law. The term derives from the Latin fiat, meaning "let it be done", as such money is established by government decree, e.g., the dollar and the euro.

Then it comes to our Quote of the day - "Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value: zero." -- Voltaire

James Gemmell - 2011-11-29 13:17:21+1100 - Updated: 2011-11-29 13:18:23+1100

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

-- John Maynard Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Terrence Miao - 2011-11-29 14:20:37+1100

Thanks for that. I have lived in a communist country I know what meaning of debauch the currency. Communism is good in theory but bad in practice. Long live capitalism :-)

James Gemmell - 2011-11-29 16:20:09+1100

Would that happen to be the same communist country that currently has the entire Western capitalist system at its mercy? :-D