Category: x Archive FA17

Open Strong Exercise

Essay in need of a Strong Opening

Anne Frank, the Jewish girl whose diary and death in a Nazi concentration camp made her a symbol of the Holocaust, was allegedly baptized posthumously Saturday by a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to whistleblower Helen Radkey, a former member of the church. The ritual was conducted in a Mormon temple in the Dominican Republic, according to Radkey, a Salt Lake City researcher who investigates such incidents, which violate a 2010 pact between the Mormon Church and Jewish leaders.

Radkey discovered that Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank, who died at Bergen Belsen death camp in 1945 at age 15, was baptized by proxy on Saturday. Mormons have submitted versions of her name at least a dozen times for proxy rites and carried out the ritual at least nine times from 1989 to 1999. This time, Frank’s name was discovered in a database that can be used for proxy baptism — a separate process, according to a spokesman for the church. The database is open only to Mormons.

A screen shot of the database shows a page for Frank stating “completed” next to categories labeled “Baptism” and “Confirmation,” with the date Feb. 18, 2012, and the name of the Santo Domingo Dominican Republic Temple.

Mormon posthumous proxy baptisms for Holocaust victims or Jews who are not direct descendants of Mormons has continued, despite church vows to stop such practices. Negotiations between Mormon and Jewish leaders led to a 1995 agreement for the church to stop the posthumous baptism of all Jews, except in the case of direct ancestors of Mormons, but some Mormons have failed to adhere to the agreement.

The name of Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel was recently submitted to the restricted genealogy website as “ready” for posthumous proxy baptism, though the church says the rite is reserved for the deceased, and Wiesel is alive. Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, was among a group of Jewish leaders who campaigned against the practice and prompted the 2010 pact by which the Mormon Church promises to at least prevent proxy baptism requests for Holocaust victims.

Wiesel last week called on Republican presidential candidate and Mormon Mitt Romney, a former Mormon bishop who has donated millions to the church, to speak out about the practice. The Romney campaign did not immediately reply.  The Frank case follows closely on an apology from the Mormon Church last week for recent posthumous baptisms of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal’s parents.

The latest baptism of Frank by proxy is especially egregious because she was an unmarried teenager who left no descendants. Mormon officials have stressed that in accordance with the agreements, church members are supposed to submit only the names of their own ancestors.

“The security of the names submissions process for posthumous rites must be questioned, in view of the rash of prominent Jewish Holocaust names that have recently appeared on Mormon temple rolls,” Radkey said about her latest find. “This one sailed straight through, with Anne’s correct name in their ‘secure’ database.”

Radkey said she expects, once word gets out, that church officials will scrub the records as they did with Wiesel and Weisenthal’s parents. The Mormon Church responded later Tuesday in a statement: “The Church keeps its word and is absolutely firm in its commitment to not accept the names of Holocaust victims for proxy baptism. While no system is foolproof in preventing the handful of individuals who are determined to falsify submissions we are committed to taking action against individual abusers who willfully violate the Church’s policy. Ritual baptism should be understood to be an offering based on love and respect; we regret when it becomes a source of contention.”

Exercise Specifics

In the Reply field below this post, write your strongest Opening Paragraph.

Your paragraph must contain a thesis sentence that clearly and boldly proclaims the claim you promise readers you will prove.

In addition, your Opening Paragraph will:

  1. Will make strong, perhaps paradoxical claims.
  2. Will sum up a very strong argument your essay will make.
  3. Will NOT LOSE the argument.
  4. Will itself be an arugment.
  5. Will be memorable.
  6. Will be debatable, demonstatable, illustratable.
  7. Will be a good example of itself.

Well, maybe it won’t accomplish all 7 goals, but the more the better!

You have until the end of the day to write your best first draft.
TIME LIMIT: 30 MINUTES

Stone Money Rewrite–NewEditionLover

Money Is Powerful

P1. Does having money make you a better person socially or economically? As I listened to the story of the “Stone Money Of Yap ” from the planet money team I learned many new concepts in which I thought were very interesting. I spent a long time thinking where money goes and how people in the United States go about using it. How does money just disappear without anybody knowing where it went? I view money as a concept of life and without it you basically cant survive. Without money you cant do the things you want and live life without any worries. But in the end is money always there? Do we just work just to have the idea or thought of having money?

P2. If my mom goes to work just to pay bills and pays online she technically didn’t pay them the money from her pockets but from her debit or credit card. Now this has me thinking am I just another worthless person just thinking that money is gonna cause me happiness in the long run? Its kind of a scary thought but its something to think about.

P3. I’ve learned through the broadcast that dollar bills represent the idea of money and money is never currency as you get paid. They say this because most of the money simply doesn’t exist and money is technically created out of nothing. That idea had me confused because how doesn’t money exist? Without money no ones daily routine would ever be the same again. Money comes and goes but it is a very beautiful sight to have when the money hits your account after tremendous amounts of working. When you make a purchase its basically like your signing your rights over and that’s it. Having money to me means that I can be happy and flourish with life.

P4. Money does exist and it shows how much status and “stain” you have in your town or city. What does money mean to you? Money gives me a feeling that I’ve never felt before!

P5. In the article “The Island Of Stone Money” by Milton Friedman taught me a little more about wealth and supremacy. How can you and your family be known but not have anything to show for it? Is the idea of wealth a good thing generally speaking you basically have nothing but you just a known figure. To me money is very real. The bible claims that money is the route to all evil? But without money I wouldn’t have everything that I’ve ever wanted! Money has gotten me a car, food , shelter and all my worlds greatest necessities. To me money makes you who you are without the money your nobody and your just another broke person, with money you can have all the nice things in the world and have all the power in your hand . You can clearly look at someone and tell whether or not they have money.

P6. The source i gathered by Christopher S Penn article “The fictional nature of money” he describes life’s most precious values stating “without it , you don’t eat, you don’t have a place to live, no clothes to wear, unless it doesn’t involve money. Penn also stated  Money can be a tremendous amplifier of personal power. ” meaning you can basically break the rules and do what you want just because you have money.

Work Cited

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.

“The Invention of Money.” 423: The Invention of Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.

Christopher Penn. “http://www.christopherspenn.com/2010/05/the-fictional-nature-of-money/”

Stone Money Rewrite—thebeard

A Penny For Your Thoughts

“Money is fiction” is one of the weirdest quotes I have heard from the NPR Broadcast and just one of the oddest quotes I have heard in general. I could have never thought of the money that I have not actually meaning something. The money that I have in my wallet or bank account is the money that I have to spend and I need that money to buy something. The little piece of paper that I receive from the ATM that tells me how much money I actually have in my account is as close to holding all my wealth in my hands. When I heard the story of Stone Money I did not think this could actually be real.

When I was reading Friedman’s essay I was just thinking about how the Yap money system is so similar to ours. The money that the Yap use are big round stones, called fei. The fei have a hole in the middle so when they are created they can easily bring them onto the island and leave them in one spot for eternity. The Yap have their money just sitting in the streets but they know who owns which stone. They don’t need to see their money to make a purchase to someone, just like I don’t need to see my money to use a debit card. That money just goes from my account into someone else’s account. The German government put red X marks on the Yap’s stones saying that they were the governments money now. The Germans did not move the money back to Germany but just simply left it in the same spots, but now with a red X on it. What the Germans did with the fei is almost similar to the the French did with the US gold. They just put a label on it saying that it was now theirs and couldn’t be used. Its odd that just labeling some gold in a basement could cause the Great Depression. The US could have just given France the gold and taken the money from them and maybe the Great Depression wouldn’t have happened.  It is crazy to think that a label could do something like that.

While listening to the NPR Broadcast it really made me think what that would be like to just have a new currency. Its weird to think that Brazil can just create a new currency but they did and it made their economy better. I feel like it would be hard for Brazilians to trust the new currency at first because it is something brand new to them. If I was a Brazilian during the whole crisis I would have defiantly loved the new currency. From what it seems I would be paying so much less for things that I need and want. I feel that it would have been easy for the Brazilians to trust the new currency, it helps them out. They would be able to save their money and not spend it right when they received it. They would not be over paying for some necessities.

While listening to the guys at the NPR Broadcast I find out that even thought the Federal Reserve includes the word “federal,” it is not actually part of the government. They are tasked with something simple but very large: Creating money from nothing. It is really cool how they make new money and suddenly it is in people pockets. Well not instant but almost. The Federal Reserve buys bonds from banks and the banks then give the money received from those bond purchases out as loans to people. See pretty easy, for the person trying to get the loan it sometimes turns out in their favor because interest will go down so the bank can get this money into circulation. It is crazy to think that my money is just transferred to someone else’s account when I buy something. Even if I use cash it will soon be in someones bank account and eventually in someone else’s after that. From listening to this podcast and and reading the articles its really made me think what my money is actually worth to me. These flimsy slips of linen covered with silly green symbols seem so worthless; do I really work hard at my job to earn a handful of these? Then just to spend them on worthless items.

I decided to read two articles about Bitcoin. It has always been something that interested me but I have never really looked into anything about it. In the article “Bitcoin has no place in any portfolio,” it says that the value of bitcoin has ranged from $13 in January of 2013 to roughly $1150 at the end of November 2013. The value of bitcoin changes almost every day just like the stock market. Most investors do not like to use bitcoin simply because they do not understand it. You can also simply go from millions of dollars worth of bitcoins to zero the next day if someone hacks into your computer and takes them. The cool thing with bitcoin is that you can exchange ownership of products very quickly. I read a story that some people buy expensive gaming graphic cards and sell them on bitcoin for more and that is one reason that makes those certain products hard to find in stores like Best Buy. There is no guarantee that bitcoin will be around for a while but for now it is a good way to make money and buy or trade products, that is if you know what you are doing.

So after reading and listening all of those articles about different types of money, it is still hard to tell what money actually is. Could it be a big round stone sitting next to my house that may or may not even be mine or is it a virtual coin that I may have received from trading a product I bought online. Maybe money is fictional and its just the trust in our government and each other that its is actually in our bank accounts or wallets and that we can use it to purchase our needs or wants. I have never really thought that my money that I use to purchase things with could really just be a number going from my account to someone else’s account. Just thinking back the Yap must think we are crazy when we want to buy something and hand the cashier a plastic card or paper. But then again we think they are crazy for trust that someone has a stone in the bottom of the ocean that gives their family wealth. It is also crazy to think that just a couple of guys can create a whole new currency for the people of Brazil and have it actually work out in the countries favor. Those guys basically saved that country when they were in a crisis. We live in one crazy world. But I am still going to go to the store tomorrow morning before work and buy a cup of coffee with my money that may or may not be fictional.

Works Cited

“Bitcoin has no place in your – or any – portfolio.” Marketwatch.com. 31 Jan. 2015

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.

Renaut, Anne. “The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin.” Yahoo.com. 13 Apr. 2013

“The Invention of Money.” 423: The Invention of Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.

Stone Money Rewrite

Money Makes The World Go Round

The definition of money is a form or denomination of coin or paper money. After reading multiple articles about the creation of money, how other countries deal with there money problems , and how people from other cultures view and use money. My views on money has changed, I’ve realized that money isn’t worth as much as I always thought it was.I grow up believe that money is everything, after reading these articles I was wrong. The value of  money has changed since I was a child, because of inflation every year the value of money goes down little by little. In the 70s a dollar could go along way and could last you a week. Today you are lucky if you could purchase a waterbottle for a dollar. Now I view money as numbers in my checking account.

The NRP broadcast 423 The Invention of Money had discussed “that money is as real as the stones on the bottom of the ocean floor.”  They claim that money is fiction, Money value can disappear it is not set in stone. Back when we were on the gold standard each dollar correspond to a dollar of gold. Ever since we got off the gold standard the value of money has been fluctuated. It has not been constant ever since.  Currency has changed into information, numbers and commas on a computer screen. Another interesting fact is that their are not even a trillion dollar bills in the world. Their aren’t even bills for most of the money that exits according to NRP broadcast. It is sad how much power the idea of money can make people do ridiculous and foolish things. The idea of money can be overwhelming to people, but I like to believe that if they truly understood the value of money than they wouldn’t act like it will solve all of their problems.

The way money is imported into our economy is not as you would imagine it would be. When I think our economy need money, I think the Federal Reserves sends freshly printed dollars bills to some of the biggest banks in our countries. Unfortunately that is not the case, what really occurs is the Federal Reserves types how much money they think our economy needs and they put the numbers into the computer and buys however much of treasury bonds from banks. Just like that money is sent into our economy according to NRP. They literarily make money out of nothing. Without printing any new bills or anything, they just type in numbers and with a click of a button money is created. It is hard to believe that money is fiction and not a reality. We created this idea of money and pretty soon their will be no dollar bills to exchange anymore. We will be exchanges numbers from accounts to accounts.

As I read other articles, My eyes were opened and  I realized that money value is all in our minds. At least it was in this small Island in Micronesia a Germany colony. This people on this very small Island had huge stones as there currency. Not even gold but stones that were round like big stone wheels. Now according to Milton Friedman there was a family on the island that was very wealthy but has never seen the money. But no one on the island has never questioned them about their wealth because of their ancestor. It was known that one of their ancestors went on a search for a stone that would have valuable in their currency.  But after coming across a deadly storm they had to let valuable stone sink all the way to the bottom of the ocean because if the hadn’t then it would have costed them their lives. When he returned from his travels he told all of the people on the island about what he found and what happened when they ran into the deadly storm. Ever since than the family has been wealthy because of their ancestor failures.  Its crazy to think that because of their ancestor failures the family is well off, with nothing to show for it. This just makes the augment on money being fiction even stronger. Their was a whole Island that used stones as currency, and today we use numbers on a screen as currency.

Money has evolved into a fictional thing that people of our society fight, killer, and rob each other over. Recently on the internet the bitcoin has been making moves on the world in the last year. According to Jeff Reeves “the bitcoin has no federal bank to back its value. This means that there is no true value for this, its value is whatever the person is willing to pay for it.”.  It is ridiculous that people are making their value for this Bitcoin. If it doesn’t have a sent value, Why are Americans still willing to pay for it? Every year money value goes’s down so who is to say that the idea of money won’t be relevant in a few more decades.

Work cited

“The Invention of Money.” 423: The Invention of Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.

Jeff ,Reeves . ”Bitcoin has no place in your -or any-portfolio” 31 Jan.2015.

Stone Money Rewrite – jadden14

The Idea That is Money

Money acts as a gear in the clockwork of today’s society. Take the gear out, and the whole clock stops working. However, did you ever once consider the idea that the money you hold in your bank account holds no value? Upon reading the article The Island of Stone Money, I realized that money could very well be an idea, or just an acknowledgement of value. The article describes an island called Yap in Micronesia that has a unique form of currency. On the island, the people used these gigantic, carved stone disks as their currency. The people would use these disks otherwise known as fei to buy houses and make other large purchases, and because they were so heavy they would sometimes just leave the stones where they were and acknowledge the owners. In one case, one rich villager sent workers to an island to make the biggest fei any of the villagers have ever seen. They went to the island, and created the massive fei out of stone, said to be perfectly carved. It was said to be the biggest fei they have ever seen, and because of its massive size, it held much more wealth than the other fei. On the way back, the stone was lost at sea during a massive storm. So, did the man lose his precious fei at sea? The answer is both yes and no. The villagers knew that the fei stone was his, and instead of considering it lost, they remember that the fei at the bottom of the ocean, was his. I’m shocked by the idea that these people just kept track of who owned certain fei, as someone could have their entire savings out by someone else’s house. Friedman stated that later on, the Germans took control of the island, and found that the island badly needed new roads and requested that the district chiefs repair them. However, They wouldn’t listen, so the government painted black crosses on the fei, as an attempt to claim their fei. The people of yap saw this, and then decided to fix the roads. The roads were fixed, the crosses were removed, now restoring the people of yap’s wealth. To me this seems counterintuitive to accept that by marking one’s fei automatically they lose their wealth, however, they accepted it. The people of the island revealed to us that money is not a physical object, and that you can have wealth without any physical identity to show for it, and that theory holds true to this day.

Further research led me to look for current economies that can prove this. Upon reading the article How Fake Money Saved Brazil, I can never look at the dollar bill the same way anymore. In brazil, there currency has an issue with inflation. Their currency is increasing in value day by day. At one point it was at 80%, which is astounding! If we had the same inflation rate in the United States, our economy would be in chaos! How people and shops in Brazil are able to operate is unbelievable, and the fact that the prices changed rapidly made it hard to buy goods at a consistent price. Holding onto money is useless in an economy like this, as the value of items will skyrocket and your money will hold no value. Political candidates tried to fix this, but in most cases it just made it worse. Presidents in the past tried to freeze prices, print money, but all of their efforts have been proven unsuccessful. The people of Brazil have managed to adapt to this economic system, even if its somewhat unstable.

The most unpredictable form of currency by far is cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, otherwise known as BTC, is starting to become accepted as a new form of currency in the United States and in China. In the article The Bubble Bursts on e-Currency Bitcoin, the crypto market experienced a significant crash in value. Right around April in 2013, Bitcoin reached an all time high of 266 USD, and was rocketing in value. Just three days later, it fell off a cliff. It went down to 54 USD, and people were left broke. This is very similar to a stock market crash, because of that some investors were able to predict this event and didn’t buy. Some people sold their bitcoins and took their losses, others held theirs in hopes of a rise in value. Today, you can buy a bitcoin for 4187 USD, and it will probably change once your done reading this. Cryptocurrency, like stocks, can sporadically change value in a moments notice. Think of cryptocurrency like a race car. It can take fast turns, accelerate and brake fast, and when in the wrong hands, can crash. The thing that’s interesting about bitcoins is, it’s just an icon on a screen, or a line of encrypted code. It has no physical backing, and yet people have become very rich off this.

Even in the United States at one point their was an issue with our currency system. In Friedman’s article, he talks about the gold standard and how it failed. France wanted to transfer its dollars into gold, and at the time US currency was backed by a guaranteed amount of gold, that was yours any time you asked for it. However, the United States didn’t want to have to ship all the gold overseas, so France agreed to just have them leave a note on a desk with the gold, kind of reserving it for them. This lowered the US dollar’s value, and helped raise gold value in france. This acknowledgement of value, is what money in the world today is. The value in your account, the cash in your pocket, is no longer backed by anything. It’s crazy to think that our cash isn’t really worth anything physical, but is instead a symbol of wealth. When you look at all the currencies and how they are backed, you will find out that almost every one does not have a set value. They run off what the government says they are worth. There is no more gold, or any sort of backing, just word or a stone in your yard. This idea that we call money is what paid for our house, food, and all our necessities, and is only that, an idea.

 

Work Cited

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.

Renaut, Anne. “The Bubble Bursts on E-currency Bitcoin.” Yahoo! News. Yahoo!, 13 Apr. 2013. Web.

Joffe-Walt, Chana . “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. 9 Sept. 2017. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil&gt;>

Stone Money Rewrite–rainbow987

                                                      “Money is Worthless”

As defined by the widely used and accepted dictionary Merriam-Webster, money is “something generally accepted as a medium of exchange, a measure of value, or a means of payment.” However, this textbook interpretation does not explain the abstract question as to why society accepts a flimsy piece of paper or a transfer of virtual numbers on a computer screen as a sign of growth. As a small child I can recall asking my father a very similar question. I frequently asked “Why is money worth anything? It is only paper. Why do people care how much paper they own?” My father struggled to provide an explanation that I found sufficient. I decided, with my decision being recently confirmed in a podcast entitled “The Invention of Money,” that the only thing that you need for money to work is for people to believe in it. If people believe that it is valuable, then it is valuable. As soon as trust is lost, the value is also lost. It is similar to a car. When a new model is released, everyone wants to get their hands on it. However, one year later, people no longer want the old car. Therefore, its value is reduced significantly. This analogy shows that the value of money can fluctuate, just as the value of commodities can fluctuate. This simple yet complex theory has been proven true in a variety of ways among many different societies.

It is difficult to comprehend the simplicity of a currency system. The island of Yap, a small island located in the Pacific Ocean, has a monetary system comprised of large stones called fei. In the United States, small paper bills called dollars are exchanged regularly. Although being physically extremely different, the fei and the dollar are one in the same. The only source of security that either provide is their respective society’s trust in the object’s worth. The trust that a society has in its currency can fluctuate over time, which would change the overall value of said currency as well. In Yap, if ownership of a fei is transferred from one person to another, the fei is not physically transported to the new owner. Everyone in the community simply accepts that ownership has changed from one person to another. Milton Friedman’s essay entitled “The Island of Stone Money” chronicles this concept even further. In the 1800’s, Yap was a German colony. Upon inspection of the island, the German government insisted that the citizens of Yap work to fix the roads. The people refused, so the Germans used black paint to draw crosses on many of the fei. The black cross represented German ownership. In a different society, in which possession of a commodity is required to represent ownership, the Germans would have seized the stones. However, the Yap society does not require one to physically possess an object to own it and share in its wealth. Therefore, the black crosses proved as a sufficient form of symbolic “seizing.” It was done to motivate the people of Yap to abide by the German’s wishes. This small action caused the citizens of Yap to quickly agree to fix the roads, since the German interference created doubt in the value of the stones. Once the task was completed, the paint was washed away and the fei once again belonged to the original owner. It is strange to think that a small action such as painting an object can cause an entire group to believe that they are losing wealth. The fei was never moved from its location, yet to the people of Yap, the fei was no longer theirs to own.

This idea has been displayed throughout history many times. An example of this occurred during the span of time when the United States backed their money by gold. France did not want to depend on the pieces of paper that represented the gold, in fear that the American dollars would be worthless. In other words, the French were worried that the latest car model would be released, causing the older models to lose their worth. Instead, the country asked the US Federal Reserve Bank for their supply of gold upfront. They requested a commodity that everyone would value equally, which is gold, rather than the dollar bills. Instead of physically sending France their gold, the Bank chose to move the gold to a separate part of their office and essentially, label it as “France’s Gold.” No objects were physically traded. Although the gold was still in the United States, it was considered to belong to France because people believed that it belonged to France. In comparison, an article written by Anne Renaut for Yahoo! News discusses a virtual currency system called Bitcoin. The entirety of exchanges conducted through this resource are done on the internet. Physical objects are never traded. The only representation that ownership of funds changes is a number change on a computer screen. Although seeming trivial, the significance of this change is confirmed by the trust that people put into it. It is as significant as the label being changed in the Federal Reserve Bank, which redirected ownership from the United States to France. In every case discussed, the exchange of money is considered important and valuable because people believe that it is so. Without this faith, money would not succeed as a system of exchange.

In the late 1900s, Brazil struggled with extremely high rates of inflation. At its highest, the inflation rate was eighty percent per month. It was the norm for people to spend their paycheck as soon as it was received because the money was losing its value. In comparison, it was as though someone was handed the equivalent of a US one hundred dollar bill on Friday night, and it would be worth significantly less on Saturday morning. Brazil’s problem with inflation originated in the 1950s when money was created to fund the building of a new capital to be called Brasilia. Due to the mass production of cruzeiros, Brazil’s former currency, in a short time period, all money lost significant value. This issue worsened for the remainder of the century until several economists implanted an entirely new form of currency, the real. People had lost faith in the old system. Therefore, it was no longer functioning properly. By creating an entirely new currency that was not already considered valuable, people gradually began to depend and rely on it as its value remained constant while the cruzeiro’s declined. As the citizens of Brazil adapted to the new currency, inflation rates quickly returned to a reasonable level. This event further emphasizes on the point that trust and belief are the primary reasons that money is considered valuable.

It has been proven in a multitude of settings and cultures that a successful economy is formed and maintained by trust. In order for money to be valuable, people have to believe in its value. Without trust, a dollar bill would be nothing more than a piece of paper, and a fei would be nothing more than a large stone. It is important to realize how powerful the idea of trust truly is. Without it, a functioning currency system would not exist, along with many other concepts. Belief in an idea is what gives it its power and influence over a group. In its truest form, money is completely worthless. Nobody wants money, as in, nobody wants flimsy paper bills. However, almost everybody desires power, and power is garnered through the paper bills that we call money. Because we as a society believe that money represents wealth and influence, we consider it valuable. Therefore, it is valuable. The newer car model will always be more valuable than the older model because the majority of people value the newer model more. In this way, money itself is only valuable because the majority of people believe it to be valuable. My perspective on this topic has not changed drastically since reading more about it, though I do appreciate the acquired knowledge. As a child, I often thought about topics of the like, and I still believe that if were people not to believe in the value of the dollar, the fei, the real, or any other form of currency, that it would not exist as it does today.

                                                                Works Cited
Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” n.d. Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford    University, 1991.
“The Invention of Money.” This American Life. N.p., n.d. Web.
“Money.” Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web.
Renaut, Anne. “The Bubble Bursts on E-currency Bitcoin.” Yahoo! News. Yahoo!, 13 Apr. 2013. Web.

Stone Money Rewrite- Theadmiral

The Ambiguity of Money

Presently at any mall, convenience store, or place of business, one will rarely witness paper money transactions. Instead, credit and debit card transactions are the new norm as a swipe of a plastic is the trendy method to transfer funds. In fact, technology advanced so far that a customer just needs a smart phone to carry out a retail transaction. Similarly, the economic structures about one hundred years ago on the small island called Yap depicted in the essay by Milton Freidman entitled “The Island of Stone Money” exhibits similar habits. The main difference between today’s American society and Yap lies in the method of payment; instead of swiping cards as use of currency, the people of Yap used large pieces of limestone, shaped and brought over by small bamboo boats hundreds of miles away. These large pieces of limestone changed hands maybe two or three times in a person’s life, because the people of Yap would not use these for everyday essentials like buying groceries; however, the they spent their limestones on wedding dowries for their daughters, and purchasing plots of land for construction of domestic dwellings. After building a dwelling or securing the dowry, the wealth was exchanged from person to person without moving a single stone. Like the swipe of a plastic card that lacks an actual physical transfer of money for goods or services, the people of Yap transferred wealth from one individual to another. After reviewing all the concepts from the article on the Yap society as well as the information on modern American society, one can conclude that the exchange of paper dollars is rather obsolete as compared to the “old days” when “cash was king.”

To understand the transition of paper money from something that previously had intrinsic value to something that has no value at all, one should understand the history of how paper dollars got their worth. Many years ago, when the United States had enough gold to back up the paper money, one could bring a dollar to the bank and get a dollar’s worth of gold. As the United States government continued to print paper money, the amount of gold one could get with that dollar declined because there were more bills in circulation than the gold that backed them. This concept is what we know as inflation. The island of Yap does not have this problem. As stated in Friedman’s essay, Yap does not have precious metals like gold and silver on their island, so there is no perceived value in material things like metals or even a piece of paper. What Yap sees value in is arduous task of making the Fei, the actual word for the stone money, and the long, dangerous journey involved with traveling to the limestone quarries hundreds of miles away.

The transition to a worthless dollar from the paper dollar that once had worth to people is truly fascinating. Talking to small business owners, Chuck and Maria Nucci, on the matter, they explained things from their point of view. The Nucci have prior business experience with money as they owned a retail establishment for over twenty years. The Nuccis were in the jewelry business for quite some time, so they witnessed firsthand the relationship between gold and paper money. Chuck Nucci explained to inner workings of the gold market and the relationship between the paper dollar and pure gold as a trading commodity. Nucci explained there was a time when gold was not regulated, one purchased gold bullion for about two hundred dollars an ounce. Once it started trading as a popular commodity and became a regulated market, the price of gold sky rocketed and its value doubled, bringing the price to about four hundred dollars an ounce in 1989 according to charts from onlygold.com. Accordingly, when the price of gold goes up, the price of the dollar goes down which makes money which had perceived value to just a piece pf paper.

After again speaking with the Nuccis about this assignment, Chuck Nucci posed an important question, “what exactly gives this big rock so much worth”?  The information in the articles are thought provoking; realistically, the fei and the dollar bill in today’s society are exactly the same. If one has a one-dollar bill and a one-hundred-dollar bill, and puts them side-by-side, there is not much of a difference between the two except for a watermark, a picture, and a number. Today, there is not nearly enough gold in depositories like Fort Knox to back up the actual worth of American bills, so paper money is now essentially a piece of paper, just as Fei is a large piece of limestone.  Both Fei and paper money rely on word of mouth and have the perception that an ordinary object such as a piece of paper or a rock have value. In contrast, they are both ordinary items that have no value at all. In conclusion, the Fei, and the dollar bill are very similar; both have value because of how they are used in their given societies.

 

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.

Nucci, Charles. Personal interview. 10 September 2017

Nucci Maria. Personal interview. 10 September 2017

“Historical Gold Prices Annual high and low Gold prices since 1972.” Historical spot gold prices, onlygold.com/Info/Gold-Price-History-Since-1972.asp. Accessed 10 Sept. 2017.

Stone Money Rewrite- Yoshi

Money is Not Real

In the little Island of Yap, the wealthy people would get onto a boat, and travel 400 miles to get these large, uneven limestone discs. These discs were so big and heavy, it was an uncomfortable trip for the people of Yap. The limestone discs were called fei, they were used as currency. The shaping of the stone requires intense labor; that is why they’re so valuable. There are big holes in the middle of the discs, in order for them to be transported around the small island of Yap. Ironically, the holes are used for them to be moved to their first location; after that, they do not move!

They will usually trade the fei for big purchases according to NPR’s Broadcast of “The Story of the Stone Money.” The thought of a huge, hole-drilled stone from an island quarry could make the people of Yap rich is very peculiar. It sounds less reasonable that the stones aren’t actually in the possession of their owner. As I started listening to NPR’s Broadcast of “The Story of the Stone Money” and reading Milton Friedman’s “Island of Stone Money” I began to realize our economy and our visual of money is not too far off from those that live in Yap. Both, the Yap and us Americans, believe we can be wealthy and gain wealth by not actually physically moving anything. Someone in Yap claims a stone that fell to the bottom of the ocean. But just the same, we do not need cash, all we need is a magnetic stripe to move wealth around. If that does not seem strange to us, then neither should the Yap claiming a stone they have never seen.

In Milton Friedman’s story, “Island of Stone Money” Friedman explains how the French didn’t think the USA would stick to their gold standard of $20.67 an ounce. Therefore, according to Friedman, they asked the NY Federal Reserve to convert their dollar assets into gold, and set it aside for them instead of shipping it overseas. The Federal Reserve then put aside gold for the french. They separated the gold, and put it in drawers so it wasn’t touched. This way everyone knew that belonged to them.  After reading that I realized money is just knowing what you have, it is nothing physical. For example, you do not need the physical cash in your hand to determine your wealth. In Yap they determined their wealth by others knowing how many fei they owned, and not much different us in the USA determine how wealthy we are by digital numbers raising in our accounts.

After reading, “Island of Stone Money” I began to questions why do so many people have the faith in others to determine their own wealth. For example, how is it that I deposit money into my bank account, and a digital number, a machine gives me, determines my wealth. How does money from my account get taken out, and put into the car companies account. But nothing physically is exchanged? That flimsy green piece of linen is rarely used anymore, it is all about the plastic card with a chip in it. How is it that France has the faith in us to put aside gold for them that they bought, but they never physically saw? How is it that there is a fei at the bottom of the ocean near Yap that no one has seen for years, but yet it is still being used as if it was physically there.

I continued my research on how people put their faith into other with their money, and I came across an article by NPR’s Broadcast called “How Fake Money Saved Brazil”. Just twenty years ago inflation in Brazil reached 80% a month according to NPR. Brazil’s inflation began when Brazil’s government printed money in order to build Brasilia, Brazil’s capital. They created a new currency and it improved their economy rapidly! People would still have cruceros, but everything was listed in a URV, Unite of Real Value. One URV would equal 7 cruceros, and the next week one URV would equal 14 cruceros. According to NPR broadcast this idea was created so people would stop thinking prices would go up. After a few months the prices began to equal out, and that’s when they decided the URV was the new real currency. After this change 20,000 people got out of poverty!

Money is different everywhere you go, but the way it is used is very similar. The people of Yap would just mark their fei with a painted ‘X’ to claim it, and correspondingly the Federal Reserve put gold aside for the French and labeled it, so everyone knew it was for the French. The same thing happens here in the United States; almost everyone keeps their money in banks, and the only way they know who owns it is through an account number. If you think about it money is almost never actually exchanged physically in person. Transferring money from one person to another can be done from the comfort of your own home, using online banking. Almost everyone has moved to online banking, because it is so much more convenient. Most of the world has moved on from physically money, and developed a way to claim it without having it with them.

After reading these articles I came to think, what actually is money? To the people in Yap money is a big rigid limestone that doesn’t have to be in their possession. To us money is fake, it isn’t that green rectangle linen with pictures on it. It is numbers we see in our accounts, and we use plastic cards to make purchases. To Brazilians money was virtual, it didn’t exist it was just a unit of measurement to control their inflation.  Throughout the years money has developed many different values. Now a days it is hard to survive without money, even though we might not even physically see it. I believe money is what makes the world go around. Even if no one actually has a definition of what money is.  Money all around the world is physically different, but the actual use of it is all the same. What connects everyone’s money value to all others are their concept of money. The concept of money is just the trust you have in each other. Whether you live in the US and put your trust in a bank. Or whether you live in Yap, and put your trust into other people knowing what is yours, or even trusting 4 men you have never met before to create a new currency and help inflation. Money is different everywhere, it is the trust that makes it the same.

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.

Joffe-Walt, Chana . “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. 9 Sept. 2017. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil&gt;.

“The Invention of Stone Money.” 423: The Invention of Stone Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.

A04: Stone Money Rewrite- LifeisSublime

Money is a Concept

Money is a concept. It’s a concept created by human beings in order to simplify trade and distribute power. Whether is be with paper, plastic, stones or some made up currency, the thought of money was utilized to make it easier to buy things and to produce a name for someone in a town where they are know for their financial standing. With all that being said it’s time that people look at money, not as how much they personally have in the bank, but as something that exists but doesn’t, something that’s important but isn’t, and something that was made on the grounds of trade, nothing more, nothing less.

In order to understand that money is nothing more than an organizational tactic for trade, you must understand what money is for the people of the Yap islands. The island of Yap is a very small island located in the Pacific Ocean. This tiny island wouldn’t even be something to talk about if it wasn’t for their currency and how they perceive the values of it. On this island people use huge stoned carved into circles to represent money. The family with the biggest and nicest stone was to be consider the most wealthy. These stones where carved on a certain island within this island chain and brought to the island of Yaps once they were finished. One family ordered a stone so beautiful and big that it would hold their financial standing up among everyone else. On the boat ride back, with the giant stone aboard, the working men claimed that the stone fell out of the boat and sank to the bottom of the ocean floor. Coming back to shore empty handed would have made most people extremely upset that their prize possession now a wonderful addition to the coral reef, but not for the people on this island. The family didn’t fret at all because they still, in a way, owned the stone and everyone also knew that. The philosophy that these people have regarding their currency is that if the town knows you have it, then it’s yours. So no matter whether or not the stone is present for trade or becoming a wonderful home for the fishes, the value of the stone still stands and it stands for the family that is know for having it. That is a very interesting take on money. These people use stone circles, compared to the dollar bills in our wallets, but don’t even need to have it on them to be considered “good for it”. Their currency is based upon trust and community, the actual thing that “holds value” doesn’t even need to be present to stand the value. That’s pretty incredible and proves that money is a concept, especially to these people.

Over in Brazil, in the 1980’s, their economy was facing a major downfall. This problem had been brewing since the 1950’s and it stemmed from overproduction of money. Brazil was looking at an 80% inflation rate per month. Meaning that if something cause $1 this month, it would cost $2 the next month. In order to fix this problem the president pulled in a couple of guys straight out of college and put their plan to save the economy in place. They needed to slow the production of money while installing the people’s faith back into the currency since everyone bought in bulk out of fear of the inflation. They created URV’s, Unit of Real Value, which, despite the name, wasn’t real at all; it was virtual. The URV’s were given to the people and instructed them to use it just like money. The catch was the value that they held; the inflation was still climbing but instead of paying $1 you payed 1 URV, and next month instead of paying that $2 you payed 1 URV. URV’s held value for everything purchasable in Brazil but the prices never changed. Eventual the currency balanced out and Brazil actually started using the URV’s as their permanent use of money. So for Brazil the people were using money that wasn’t real, and like the people of the Yap islands, the value wasn’t there. The people didn’t know how much each URV was valued at, but it didn’t stop them from spending and circulation the wealth which fixed their problem in the end. Money is a concept in Brazil because the value isn’t always there and it doesn’t matter.

To make this more relatable I looked up the economy that America has been facing for the past decade and tried to compare it to both Yap and Brazil. In America we pass around paper bills that supposably are worth, or were worth gold (gold being the most valuable thing on the Earth at one point). Paper versus gold. Then it occurred to me that not everyone gets paper dollars, physical, but paper checks that claim that money is known as yours, non-physical. That is the same as having a URV that is claiming to be something when you never actually see the physical worth of it, it’s just numbers on a piece of paper, or more recently, digits that change when you check your bank accounts. Having money “known as yours” sounds very similar to having that rock in the water but still knowing that the worth of it is yours. Comparing what I know from the island of Yap and Brazil, this isn’t an uncommon thing. Even in todays day in age and in America is money still concept. Its a circulation of paper that isn’t even present at the time of exchange. Money is a concept here as well.

Money, or should I say currency,  has lots of power on a lot of things, but when you boil it all down does it really hold value to it? After analyzing Yap, Brazil, and America on their currencies and how they use them I have come to the conclusion that although currency and money is a very useful system of trade, it has become more of a concept than a physical action. Money is a concept, and the proof is in your wallet.

 

Works Cited

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” n.d. Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford     University, 1991.

“The Invention of Money.” This American Life. N.p., n.d. Web

Thomas, M. (2014, October 13). What a stronger dollar means for the economy. Retrieved September 10, 2017, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-will-a-strengthening-dollar-affect-the-us-economy/

 

Stoney Money Rewrite–Splash

Value of Money

When I was listening to the story of about the island of Yap in class I thought to myself my teacher was making this story up. My teacher told us about how people would make huge limestones and ship the 400 miles away by boat to some island so far away. Even when people would use them for a purchase they wouldn’t have to be moved anywhere to change ownership. Why would people take the time to make such large limestone coins to be their representation of money? It seemed absurd because you couldn’t even move them easily or use them for little things like food for the house, it had to be spent on something big like building a new house or as said in the Planet Money Prologue if one of your warriors died in war we could use that stone to buy back the warriors body. It was also interesting to know that only if we had one of these stones it would mean we are considered as wealthy, which was different because we could have tons of gold and other forms of money but we weren’t ever considered to be as wealthy as someone who owned one of these stones as stated in the story of stone money. Also, something else I read was that there was no form of documentation on this island of Yap, they have such a strong faith in each other’s word. Someone could say they wanted a house built, a contractor would come out build a house with no upfront pay but know that the fei was his once the house was completed. Even while reading Friedman’s essay the thing that stood out the most to me was when he talked about the magnificent fei that was being delivered over sea. A big storm aroused and the fei sank to the bottom of the ocean, and the people on the island of Yap were perfectly fine with that. They said that even though it is at the bottom of the ocean it still has its value, just as if it were leaning against the owner’s house. To me this is ridiculous because if that were my fei that sank I wouldn’t be as calm about it as they are and it wouldn’t seem valuable to me anymore.

Then that has me go into thinking why is money so important to people, and what is the point of money in the first place? The NPR broadcast I was listening to talks about all the stages of money and how it has changed over the years. It first started as the stone fei, then to gold, and bills, off to checks, and now it is as simple as just a number appearing in our bank account. It was enjoyable how they were talking about the differences in how payments work now a days, they said that when they pay their phone bill it’s not like someone goes and delivers a hundred dollars to their phone company. It is almost as if they are just sending numbers back and forth to one another and it is a game that doesn’t even feel real. They even said in the NPR brodcast that most of the money that exists is just the idea of money.

Which then brings me to the Lie That Saved Brazil, and what they had to go through.  Listening to the story was just so awful for the people of Brazil. It’s not understandable why people had to be living the way they did when there was so much money in the world to be shared.  This is because there was apparently no money for the people in Brazil and they were really struggling to get by. Chana Joffe-Walt talked about what the stores were like and how the prices of things would go up or change every single day. How there would be a sticker guy that would go up and down the aisles changing the prices each day, people would even try to get in front of the sticker guy so they could pay the old price. It was devastating when she told us that even when people would get paid, they’d have to spend their money before it wasn’t worth anything anymore. She said you could put your money in a drawer and each day that went by the clock would be ticking on the value of your money. There was even a point when the government threatened to take everyone’s money, people went into panic and some she said even committed suicide. But then one day four men came along to help Brazil’s situation so they wouldn’t have to live like this anymore. Hero’s was what she described them as, they proposed a way to make people think their money had value again. Not long after things started to change because this new idea seemed to make such a difference in the way people just “lied to themselves” so to speak. Even though there was no physical money, all they needed was for people to believe there was and that made all the difference.

This story just easily helps me flow right into Weekend at Bernanke’s, listening to this story just gets me thinking about all the different ways the Federal Reserve could have helped Brazil for example, because in the brodcast they said the Fed can create money at and given time. Why they wouldn’t think to give some to Brazil during that crisis, I don’t exactly know. They were saying that the fed can just make money out of nothing and just lend it out and if they should do this. The process is so easy as they explained, all you do is add a few numbers, click a mouse and alas money is created. Also on top of that they even exclaimed that banks don’t just like to sit on load of money they like to lend it out, so why not use all of this money to help countries in dire need of it? It is interesting to think if the Fed screws up then the people stop believing in the dollar and the dollar loses value as they explained.

Thinking about all these different ways money is transferred and the money people have and how much they have can put them in the category of being wealthy, but why?  Some things these days don’t really have a good representaion of money. What is the point or meaning of money? Money is just something that holds value, but there are so many different things that hold value to different people and if you really think about the dollar and how it is just a piece of paper with a guys face on it, it doesn’t make sense why people go so crazy over it. Money is just another materialistic thing that people think they need to be successful in life when there are far greater things, like knowledge for example. Now a days with how high tech money as gotten it’s just a game of sending numbers and not physical money, so it’s as if the money isn’t even real to begin with.

Works Cited

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.

Joffe-Walt, Chana . “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. 30 Jan. 2015. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil&gt;.

“The Invention of Stone Money.” 423: The Invention of Stone Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.