No, probably not, or at least not in a manner any student could stay awake for. Still, it might help if everyone realized money was an agreed upon delusion that only has value because we assign it ourselves, and is literally nothing more than a government backed IOU for services rendered.
i never noticed before but i like the background behind you simon. so many channels go for that smooth, bright, modern, backdrop, but this darkly lit brick wall brings a different feel to the video. i like it
I needed a new heel for my shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now where were we... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
wrong the spanish dollar was 8 real. nobody actually cut the thing into 8 pieces. you could just use a real. the spanish dollar is called piece of 8 because the german Thaler was the dominating currency at the time (25 g silver) and the habsburgs also ruled over spain. spains currency was the real but luckely 8 real added up to about 25 g silver so they could mint a 8 real coin and be part of global trade where the 25 g thaler, crown, peso, dalder, dollar and whatever they where called elsewhere was the worlds trade currency.
You mean China was foolish enough to give us trillions. If by chance the US defaults it then mostly becomes China's problem. The same applies to any nation that lends to excess
@@heyyou5189 i think China's goal was to gain influence and leverage over the most powerful country in the world. As to how well it worked its difficult for me to say
Poor yet making a stupid amount of money like someone making millions but being in billions of debt. It can't be paid off. the next president and his party are screwed.
Where's the gold at that's supposed to be in Ft Knox? Oh, it went into the rich motherfuckers' pockets a long time ago. Take Trumps money then. He stole every penny of it anyway, so it isn't rightfully his to begin with.
In other words, that time when government spending had consequences and it was reflected in the currency. Now its funny money with a matching infinite debt spiral. This pairs well with being able to fund wars that are never really winnable or even end at all.
@@HWEWSWEW Ehhh, it might be a tad disingenuous to say that government regulation is the big source when it comes to the source of inflated costs. Its really dependent on the politics that revolve around it. Public colleges in CA were basically free during the 50-70s before the source of funding got cut (largely due to hard caps on housing taxes). Can't make up the costs which means tuition becomes higher for the student. We look at other countries with public healthcare options and access to critical pharma products aren't a problem. Of course it will come at the cost of higher taxes in order to subsidize this, and people can feel free to disagree based on their values -- but overall, its usually the political factors that surround these critical components of society that hurt it the most. So in a sense you are right that gov regulation caaaan lead to higher costs, but not necessarily in the act of trying to subsidize the cost of the programs themselves. There always has to be a consistent revenue stream for these programs so that they can function correctly. Cut that out, then there's problems. Other countries have figured out how to do it -- we haven't 'nor is there the political will to really do anything about it. I don't really reply to YT comments since honestly we are all probably gonna forget about it like the day after, but it is nice being able to articulate thoughts every once in a while.
Money is anything whose value lies primarily in what you can trade it for rather than the thing itself. Or, in other words, money is not wealth; money represents wealth. What makes money money is the general belief that you will be able to trade it for whatever it is you want whenever you want to. What that means is that although the government (or really, anybody as has happened more than once) can print as much money as they want, they can't magically create the wealth that money represents when they do it. It is only tangentially related to "government spending having consequences" or "fund(ing) wars that are never really winnable." In a sense, government spending in the 19th century was less consequential than it is now because the size of the government was so much less back then. Note that in addition to trading money for goods or services, you can also trade money for money. That is called "loaning" or "borrowing" depending on your perspective, where someone gets money in exchange for a promise to pay back more money in the future. Since that transaction only involves money and not any real wealth, a change in the value of money in terms of wealth over time can affect the results of the transaction. When the value of money increases, that is when a unit of money becomes worth more goods, that is called deflation, and when the value of money decreases, that is when a unit of money becomes worth fewer goods, that is called inflation. A creditor wants the value of money to stay the same or increase over time so that they can recover the amount of wealth they lost access to when they loaned the money. A debtor wants the value of money to stay the same or decrease so that it, in a sense, costs less to pay the loan back. The largest debtor in the United States is the United States government, and the US government also sets the monetary policy which directly affects inflation. So, what that means is you're going to see inflation happen as a regular thing, at least in the United States. Over time, the efficient market hypothesis says that the information about the inflation rate is going get built into the interest rate you have to pay for a loan, leading to higher interest rates. To cause a small amount of inflation, the money supply is adjusted to grow slightly faster than the amount of wealth created. You don't want a lot of inflation because people hate that, but people don't generally mind a small inflation rate. The thing is, nobody really knows how much wealth there is in the United States, instead they guess. What should really blow your mind is that nobody really knows how much money there is in the United States, either. That's because, due to fractional reserve banking, banks create money on their own. So, the people who set monetary policy have to take guesses about that, too. Incidentally, this is all true whether or not the money is backed by precious metals or land or whatever. What makes gold useful as money, as opposed to an industrial metal, is the commonly-held belief that people will be willing to accept gold in trade for the things they want, and it is certainly possible to increase the gold supply by, for example, adulterating it with copper or other less precious metals, as has happened more than once.
Wow! From ~2:00 to ~2:50 I learned a boat-load that I'd never heard before. Spanish money gave us the dollar sign? We had no universal currency even in 1806? States printed their own money? I consider myself a student of history, but, MAN... this one slapped me upside the head!
After this video I feel happy that money are old-fashioned, and having a decimal stored in a database, accessed through a card makes everything simpler.
From 0:16 to 0:23 should be the start of a {globally televised} Citibank ad. *THANK YOU* Simon Whistler for giving me a laugh 1st thing in the morning {since the continuing bad news out of Beuit}. Watching from Sydney Australia. 😅😉🌄🧞♂️🏚💥💀💔
@@--Dan- once the interest exceeds our ability to pay even on the interest payments and when it's mathematically clear we wouldn't be able to pay it off there could be some sort of reckoning
@@drasticallyfantastic7164 the US spends about 9% of its total spending on interest payments. So you've got quite a bit of room for that. But also that's not REALLY accurate, where at times like the last few months the US government can borrow huge sums at almost no interest, due to market instabilities, and use that cheaper money to pay down older more expensive debts. It may be akin to government-run ponzi scheme in some sense, but as long as people will still lend, the US is fine. And we're a long way from that really being an issue, so long as the Congress doesn't blow up the economy and refuse to raise the debt ceiling.
The miracle of not actually having anything backing the currency is that the US can _literally_ just print more, at which that "can pay all debts by force of law" thing comes into play: the person who is owed _can't_ say no as long as they don't have the benefit of some special contract. The downside (because there's always a downside) is that the resulting inflation is _directly equivalent_ to a secret tax, even if an economically proportional one.
Few days ago I went to ampm and total was $9.14 and I paid with a ten. They didn't have change and wouldn't round to even $9 so and was rude about it so I said ok I'll pull to a gas pump and get the change in gas. The clerk got so mad even tried saying no. It was hilarious when the customer at next register and behind me in line decided to do the same!
I just woke up from a nap. I dreamed that Simon was reading me the shipping forecast. Now, this is relevant to me because I am, in fact, a mariner. However, this is unusual because I am not British, and I have spent most of my career in the South China Sea.
I love this channel. Facts, a familiar theme tune and Simon. What more could one want? If you, too, miss a certain dead channel, Okay Thank You exists now :)
Good stuff as always Simon but I do have a minor complaint. This would be a lot easier to listen to if there wasn't what appears to be background music playing do softly so as to be a subconscious distraction.
That's the fastest way to devalue the money that's already out there. Look at Venezuela. They tried to print more money to "fix" the problem. Basically creating a situation that a gallon of milk would cost you close to $100,000.
@@neutronpixie6106 Venezuela's hyperinflation actually started in 1979 when a crisis on the oil market led to a sudden decrease in oil exports, the main export for that country, resulting in an economic crisis. In general, in the early 80s South America was plunged in a debt crisis. And the Venezuelan government devalued the Bolívar in hopes of stablising the economy. It didn't work. Up until the early 00s, the inflation rate stayed in the double digits. Chavez kinda managed to stablise the economy but within a year of getting into office, Maduro ruined it. What did not help was that the US - and other nations - had put harsh financial sanctions on Venezuela. When you can't longer really partake in international trade and your money doesn't have real value on the financial exchange market because the lead currency of the world - the US Dollar - can't be openly traded against it. To counter act this, Maduro printed money to drive up consumerism internally but that can only be a short-term solution and it turned out as such. Even an increase of the minimum wage by 30% while the inflation rate was already at 62% didn't really help to increase consumerism. Even if Maduro's government would stop printing money, once more devalure the currency, collect a lot of the money and destroy it somehow, they would still end up with the same situation as long as the sanctions are in place. As long as the Bolívar can't be directly traded in for the US Dollar, it is basically worthless on the international financial market, driving up the costs of import - as long as Venezuela can even find trading partners - and that is in the end once more driving up living costs, forcing the government to print more money since the economy can't really get started on its own, again driving inflation. The only way out of it would be if they would give into the US demands to completely privatise the market, let US companies run rampant through Venezuela, and have Maduro step down despite being the legal President and have the guy with no legal claim - Guaido - become president. Or the US stops its sanctions but the only chance for that would have been Bernie Sanders becoming US President and that is not going to happen now.
@@AaronLitz : Gold is valuable as a paperweight, and little else. That means that it's use as money has little competition for other purposes. If you look around, you find that _every_ successful currency has both that, and an ease of trading it back and forth, as their only truly unifying traits. Everything else is propaganda (in the case of gold, by California gold purchasers who wanted a big customer), and wishful naivete.
Please people: go read up on Modern Monetary Theory! Prof Stephanie Kelton's Deficit Myth (or her various videos on RUclips) are a great place to start. A government with monetary sovereignty and a fiat currency (like the US, UK, Japan and others) CANNOT run out of money. Just as the Union did in the Civil War, government spending creates the money that people use to pay taxes, not the other way around!
Something to be aware of, right now with the f-d up economy, a lot of people are having to spend coins and bills that they had been hanging onto. It pays to check your change from merchants, sometimes there will be older coins and bills that are worth more than their face value. I have collected several "silver certificates" this way, at first glance they look like regular bills so most people don't notice. Coins maybe not such a big deal, unless you're a collector.
I'm reminded of Ankh-Morpork in Pratchett's "Making Money". The bankers guarantee that there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, on the condition that nobody ever go looking for it. As a result, the guardians of the rainbow are extremely interested in anyone who might block the sun.
Interesting history I had no idea existed! The shit high schools and quite frankly, universities don't teach! Thanks Simon; maybe I should pay you tuition since you're compensating the shortcomings of my university education. Oh that's right, patreon! I'll see what I can do!
Simon...LOVE ALL of your channels!! They are ALL GREAT!!! I've learned a lot of things just by the info I get from you. Everything you do is very well explained, and thorough, and its greatly appreciated. * Video Idea- I see articles and what not about 1,700 people a DAY in the US, or approx. 4,000 a DAY around the world, who are OFFICIALLY classified as a MILLIONAIRE. Is that correct, and HOW DO THEY KNOW, but even MORE IMPORTANTLY- WHO THE HELL IS "THEY"??????? My enquiring mind must know!!!! 🤑🤷♀️
2:15 - The original dollar sign having origins with Spain? I can see how some think this, but it seems unlikely. Given how popular the "double-strike" dollar sign is in America whereas overseas it's single strike... I think the fact that it looks more like "U" and "S" superimposed on top of one another is more likely. In fact, historians have tracked down that this was likely done by Robert Morris as an attempt to make a patriotic currency symbol.
The original dollar sign having origins in the sign of a U underneath an S? I can see how some think this, but it seems unlikely. You see, the colonists in the original thirteen colonies did not prefer to use the pound due to its continuously lowered value and instead looked toward the Spanish dollar, hence where the 'S' in the dollar sign ($) came from.
@@Saltiren Which doesn't explain the double-strike dollar sign, which only appeared after the 1770s when Robert Morris started getting involved in the finance of the war effort. If it was merely based on the Spanish dollar, of which does not even use the symbol, it would use a European single strike dollar sign instead of the double-strike. Further evidence? Okay, one of the first new United States notes made after the civil war featured a "U" and "S" super-imposed over one another to look something like a dollar sign
The thying is, after the second world war the world basically stopped relying on fiat currency. We are currently employing an economy far greater than our assets.
The pieces of eight thing is also the reason that a US quarter (technically, a quarter-dollar) has the nickname "two bits". So, the next time you tap out the rhythm "Shave-and-a-Haircut", you can join Roger Rabbit in loudly and compulsively completing the jingle with the knowledge that at one point in time, such a service package would only cost you twenty-five cents.
Before even watching I'm gonna say this was back when the Gold Standard was in effect. Because under that you can't just have the Treasury print $1 billion whenever you want.
7:55 Note to the editor: if you're going to use a filter like that to make something look old-timey, please map it to the picture and not the lens. Thank you, Someone who just got kicked out of the experience enough to bother writing this
This would have been great to learn in high school history classes
I agree
The us would never teach smth like this.
No, probably not, or at least not in a manner any student could stay awake for. Still, it might help if everyone realized money was an agreed upon delusion that only has value because we assign it ourselves, and is literally nothing more than a government backed IOU for services rendered.
Na they can't teach you guys interesting historical facts! They need to teach what's on the state exams!
I learned more from RUclips and Internet. School system is a big fail
i never noticed before but i like the background behind you simon. so many channels go for that smooth, bright, modern, backdrop, but this darkly lit brick wall brings a different feel to the video. i like it
He seems to rearrange a bit for the other channels
@@heyyou5189 I think he just moves a bit further down the wall. There's usually a little crossover in the background from channel to channel.
I needed a new heel for my shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Gimme five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now where were we... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
Fucking legend
Jeff Snow I’m glad I’m not the only one who memorized that word for word just to mock others later.
could you give a foreigner a clue, please?
peter koller Grandpa Simpson (The Simpson’s) circa mid 1990s. You have to be of a certain age to get that one.
@@CapablePimento believe me, lack of age is not the problem... unfortunately.
The Spanish dollars were often cut into eight sections, which is where we get the term "two bits" to mean 25 cents.
wrong the spanish dollar was 8 real. nobody actually cut the thing into 8 pieces. you could just use a real. the spanish dollar is called piece of 8 because the german Thaler was the dominating currency at the time (25 g silver) and the habsburgs also ruled over spain. spains currency was the real but luckely 8 real added up to about 25 g silver so they could mint a 8 real coin and be part of global trade where the 25 g thaler, crown, peso, dalder, dollar and whatever they where called elsewhere was the worlds trade currency.
As an American: Simon is nailing the tempo.
An an audiophile: someone please put a de-esser on this man.
Saw the title and thought "oh Simons doing current events now."
"But it needs to have a lot of legislative discipline"
Hence the reason so many people hate fiat now.
Everyone looking at the title in confusion because we all know the US is trillions of dollars in debt
The US is in debt, but the government also has a lot of capital. Kind of like how a person can be in debt, but still have money in their wallet
You mean China was foolish enough to give us trillions.
If by chance the US defaults it then mostly becomes China's problem. The same applies to any nation that lends to excess
That was kind of my thought. We're trillions in debt, I think we Are out of money. Or just really bad at spending it.
@@heyyou5189 i think China's goal was to gain influence and leverage over the most powerful country in the world. As to how well it worked its difficult for me to say
@@Legitpenguins99 Having some sway over domestic policy.
I am sure they exert pressure on certain elected and appointed officials.
US National Debt: “Am I a joke to you?”
"I'm an insane debt. Do you think I'm a clown? Do I make you laugh? I don't see anyone else laughing..."
Business Blaze has spoiled me. I’m used to Fun Simon now.
"that time the US almost ran out of money" I miss those days. We are actually out of money now.
Poor yet making a stupid amount of money like someone making millions but being in billions of debt. It can't be paid off.
the next president and his party are screwed.
Just wait until automation makes what really backs our currency-- work, by human beings-- obsolete.
@@importedemperor4397 next...and the one after that....and quite a few before current one... astronomical debt is not a new thing
@@teemuleppa3347 they are running trillion dollar bills now. It's unbelievable.
Where's the gold at that's supposed to be in Ft Knox? Oh, it went into the rich motherfuckers' pockets a long time ago. Take Trumps money then. He stole every penny of it anyway, so it isn't rightfully his to begin with.
In other words, that time when government spending had consequences and it was reflected in the currency. Now its funny money with a matching infinite debt spiral. This pairs well with being able to fund wars that are never really winnable or even end at all.
As long as government contracts get signed and politicians get some slush it will continue
@EmperorJuliusCaesar that's normal, I don't know inflation rates in America but it is standard for money
Glad America didn't go all out. The middle east would be glass.
@@HWEWSWEW Ehhh, it might be a tad disingenuous to say that government regulation is the big source when it comes to the source of inflated costs. Its really dependent on the politics that revolve around it. Public colleges in CA were basically free during the 50-70s before the source of funding got cut (largely due to hard caps on housing taxes). Can't make up the costs which means tuition becomes higher for the student. We look at other countries with public healthcare options and access to critical pharma products aren't a problem. Of course it will come at the cost of higher taxes in order to subsidize this, and people can feel free to disagree based on their values -- but overall, its usually the political factors that surround these critical components of society that hurt it the most. So in a sense you are right that gov regulation caaaan lead to higher costs, but not necessarily in the act of trying to subsidize the cost of the programs themselves. There always has to be a consistent revenue stream for these programs so that they can function correctly. Cut that out, then there's problems. Other countries have figured out how to do it -- we haven't 'nor is there the political will to really do anything about it. I don't really reply to YT comments since honestly we are all probably gonna forget about it like the day after, but it is nice being able to articulate thoughts every once in a while.
Money is anything whose value lies primarily in what you can trade it for rather than the thing itself. Or, in other words, money is not wealth; money represents wealth. What makes money money is the general belief that you will be able to trade it for whatever it is you want whenever you want to.
What that means is that although the government (or really, anybody as has happened more than once) can print as much money as they want, they can't magically create the wealth that money represents when they do it. It is only tangentially related to "government spending having consequences" or "fund(ing) wars that are never really winnable." In a sense, government spending in the 19th century was less consequential than it is now because the size of the government was so much less back then.
Note that in addition to trading money for goods or services, you can also trade money for money. That is called "loaning" or "borrowing" depending on your perspective, where someone gets money in exchange for a promise to pay back more money in the future. Since that transaction only involves money and not any real wealth, a change in the value of money in terms of wealth over time can affect the results of the transaction. When the value of money increases, that is when a unit of money becomes worth more goods, that is called deflation, and when the value of money decreases, that is when a unit of money becomes worth fewer goods, that is called inflation.
A creditor wants the value of money to stay the same or increase over time so that they can recover the amount of wealth they lost access to when they loaned the money. A debtor wants the value of money to stay the same or decrease so that it, in a sense, costs less to pay the loan back. The largest debtor in the United States is the United States government, and the US government also sets the monetary policy which directly affects inflation. So, what that means is you're going to see inflation happen as a regular thing, at least in the United States. Over time, the efficient market hypothesis says that the information about the inflation rate is going get built into the interest rate you have to pay for a loan, leading to higher interest rates.
To cause a small amount of inflation, the money supply is adjusted to grow slightly faster than the amount of wealth created. You don't want a lot of inflation because people hate that, but people don't generally mind a small inflation rate. The thing is, nobody really knows how much wealth there is in the United States, instead they guess. What should really blow your mind is that nobody really knows how much money there is in the United States, either. That's because, due to fractional reserve banking, banks create money on their own. So, the people who set monetary policy have to take guesses about that, too.
Incidentally, this is all true whether or not the money is backed by precious metals or land or whatever. What makes gold useful as money, as opposed to an industrial metal, is the commonly-held belief that people will be willing to accept gold in trade for the things they want, and it is certainly possible to increase the gold supply by, for example, adulterating it with copper or other less precious metals, as has happened more than once.
Literally the entirety of Latin America: "First time?"
Ohh 😅
@@read4108 I know that but outside of usa it's china and it's is one of the reason why trade war started between usa and China.
Wow! From ~2:00 to ~2:50 I learned a boat-load that I'd never heard before. Spanish money gave us the dollar sign? We had no universal currency even in 1806? States printed their own money? I consider myself a student of history, but, MAN... this one slapped me upside the head!
This story is INCREDIBLE.
Nicely understated while dealing with multi-logistical issues!
You've created a fascinating history of American monetary policy. This is something I've always been interested in.
After this video I feel happy that money are old-fashioned, and having a decimal stored in a database, accessed through a card makes everything simpler.
From 0:16 to 0:23 should be the start of a {globally televised} Citibank ad. *THANK YOU* Simon Whistler for giving me a laugh 1st thing in the morning {since the continuing bad news out of Beuit}. Watching from Sydney Australia. 😅😉🌄🧞♂️🏚💥💀💔
Thank you
Haha, printer goes brrr
[U.s.a]
This is the best comment.
A microwave goes:
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Peter D_law oh Peter! Have you been watching Business Blaze??
@@Excalibur-Sonic Cool story bro
8:28 The History Guy: Don't all good stories involve pirates?
This is pretty relevant right now lol
I’m genuinely curious how we have any money right now. We can’t just file for bankruptcy. This debt is going to catch up with us
It will be inflation expect a higher cost of living.
So long as the people who own the debt keep getting their interest payments, they don't mind continuing to lend you money.
@@--Dan- once the interest exceeds our ability to pay even on the interest payments and when it's mathematically clear we wouldn't be able to pay it off there could be some sort of reckoning
@@drasticallyfantastic7164 the US spends about 9% of its total spending on interest payments. So you've got quite a bit of room for that. But also that's not REALLY accurate, where at times like the last few months the US government can borrow huge sums at almost no interest, due to market instabilities, and use that cheaper money to pay down older more expensive debts.
It may be akin to government-run ponzi scheme in some sense, but as long as people will still lend, the US is fine. And we're a long way from that really being an issue, so long as the Congress doesn't blow up the economy and refuse to raise the debt ceiling.
The miracle of not actually having anything backing the currency is that the US can _literally_ just print more, at which that "can pay all debts by force of law" thing comes into play: the person who is owed _can't_ say no as long as they don't have the benefit of some special contract. The downside (because there's always a downside) is that the resulting inflation is _directly equivalent_ to a secret tax, even if an economically proportional one.
Super interesting thank you
Great video, love the history lesson
Thanks for the vid!
"The New York Stock Exchange didn't stop trading in 'Pieces of Eight' until the beginning of the 21st Century,"?????
Huh? Like, around the year 2000?
I live in UK so contactless payment for most things.
I have some change but it just sits in my pocket getting old
I found a 1904 penny the other day at work. The change shortage has flushed out a lot of old pennies.
Few days ago I went to ampm and total was $9.14 and I paid with a ten. They didn't have change and wouldn't round to even $9 so and was rude about it so I said ok I'll pull to a gas pump and get the change in gas. The clerk got so mad even tried saying no. It was hilarious when the customer at next register and behind me in line decided to do the same!
Smart! Get that pint!
"No! There's no key on the register for that!" 😆
The Patriot Missile System lasted for 3 minutes after firing 32 blanks.Let's see how long the F16s will last🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
And they still dont
Seeing the British Simon Whistler all serious for a change and not even making fun of the US for going broke... These are dire times we live in.
I just woke up from a nap. I dreamed that Simon was reading me the shipping forecast. Now, this is relevant to me because I am, in fact, a mariner. However, this is unusual because I am not British, and I have spent most of my career in the South China Sea.
2020 - "That Time the U.S. Almost Ran Out of Money"
2021 - "The U.S. Ran Out of Money!"
The government has been in debt for years.
@@hydrolito 17 trillion dollars to be exact
They were called pieces of eight because they were physically cut into 8 pieces. That way you could give change for small purchases.
I love this channel. Facts, a familiar theme tune and Simon. What more could one want?
If you, too, miss a certain dead channel, Okay Thank You exists now :)
Good stuff as always Simon but I do have a minor complaint. This would be a lot easier to listen to if there wasn't what appears to be background music playing do softly so as to be a subconscious distraction.
Ditto
In Australia we used Rum in the early days
Prison currency. Makes sense! 😛
The two pillars wrapped in the banner "Non plus Ultra" looked like Dollar Signs.
Did the printing machine broke?
That's the fastest way to devalue the money that's already out there. Look at Venezuela. They tried to print more money to "fix" the problem. Basically creating a situation that a gallon of milk would cost you close to $100,000.
It's running 24-7.
This is the story of them inventing the printing machine.
Nah just got louder, now it go *BRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*
@@neutronpixie6106 Venezuela's hyperinflation actually started in 1979 when a crisis on the oil market led to a sudden decrease in oil exports, the main export for that country, resulting in an economic crisis. In general, in the early 80s South America was plunged in a debt crisis. And the Venezuelan government devalued the Bolívar in hopes of stablising the economy. It didn't work. Up until the early 00s, the inflation rate stayed in the double digits.
Chavez kinda managed to stablise the economy but within a year of getting into office, Maduro ruined it. What did not help was that the US - and other nations - had put harsh financial sanctions on Venezuela. When you can't longer really partake in international trade and your money doesn't have real value on the financial exchange market because the lead currency of the world - the US Dollar - can't be openly traded against it. To counter act this, Maduro printed money to drive up consumerism internally but that can only be a short-term solution and it turned out as such. Even an increase of the minimum wage by 30% while the inflation rate was already at 62% didn't really help to increase consumerism.
Even if Maduro's government would stop printing money, once more devalure the currency, collect a lot of the money and destroy it somehow, they would still end up with the same situation as long as the sanctions are in place. As long as the Bolívar can't be directly traded in for the US Dollar, it is basically worthless on the international financial market, driving up the costs of import - as long as Venezuela can even find trading partners - and that is in the end once more driving up living costs, forcing the government to print more money since the economy can't really get started on its own, again driving inflation. The only way out of it would be if they would give into the US demands to completely privatise the market, let US companies run rampant through Venezuela, and have Maduro step down despite being the legal President and have the guy with no legal claim - Guaido - become president. Or the US stops its sanctions but the only chance for that would have been Bernie Sanders becoming US President and that is not going to happen now.
Money is a store of value. Paper money is designed to lose purchase power. Gold is money every thing else is credit! Thx for putting this video up 👍
Exactamundo!
Why is gold valuable?
Aaron Litz just put that question on RUclips and see why
@@AaronLitz : Gold is valuable as a paperweight, and little else. That means that it's use as money has little competition for other purposes. If you look around, you find that _every_ successful currency has both that, and an ease of trading it back and forth, as their only truly unifying traits. Everything else is propaganda (in the case of gold, by California gold purchasers who wanted a big customer), and wishful naivete.
Dear Simon, in the XIX century, the portuguese currency was the Real, the Escudo came later in 1911, after the country became an Republic in 1910.
3:27 who else thought he was going to say "there's MasterCard" after he said" for everyone else"?
Please people: go read up on Modern Monetary Theory! Prof Stephanie Kelton's Deficit Myth (or her various videos on RUclips) are a great place to start. A government with monetary sovereignty and a fiat currency (like the US, UK, Japan and others) CANNOT run out of money. Just as the Union did in the Civil War, government spending creates the money that people use to pay taxes, not the other way around!
1:40 "Legisleshes...."
C'mon Simon, you are actually English god damnit!
Competition in currency is healthy!
Hell yeah, Pennsylvania!
You're kidding me, right? The US has been "out of money" for decades. Checked out the US National Debt Clock lately?
Were the debt numbers given based on currency at the time or adjusted for inflation?
I was hoping to hear about the loan that Morgan gave to the US government in 1880's That was another time it almost happened.
That time was today...tomorrow and the next... it’s ok we just kick the debt down the road.... truly sad...
Time to start using those bottle caps!
The Nuka Cola ones are the best ones.
"The problem with physical money is that there can only be so much of it at anyone time."
To anyone with a lick of sense that's a huge advantage.
The US hasn’t had any money in decades, lol.
The richest country in the world, actually.
@@octaneblue6 biggest economy, it's not the same thing. Although the US does have money so i don't know what OPs on about
Debt =/= lack of money
The reason the US foreign debt is so high is because of all the shit made overseas we aren't paying for.
@@octaneblue6
Ah yes, the country that's been in crippling debt for decades is the richest. Sure.
Sin Kamar it's not crippling...
This one made me go cross eyed.
Something to be aware of, right now with the f-d up economy, a lot of people are having to spend coins and bills that they had been hanging onto. It pays to check your change from merchants, sometimes there will be older coins and bills that are worth more than their face value. I have collected several "silver certificates" this way, at first glance they look like regular bills so most people don't notice. Coins maybe not such a big deal, unless you're a collector.
I'm reminded of Ankh-Morpork in Pratchett's "Making Money".
The bankers guarantee that there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, on the condition that nobody ever go looking for it.
As a result, the guardians of the rainbow are extremely interested in anyone who might block the sun.
I thought this was going to be about the debt ceiling.
Wow, this was too complicated😱
So weird to see Simon being so serious, instead of Blazing. It's like Dr Whistler and Mr. Blaze
I was wondering how can he say "allegedly" with that totally serious tone (and without laughing)
even HE knows not to F _ _ K with banks
I live in Berkshire county Massachusetts and we dont use Berkshire dollars lol
I always found it odd that stocks and bonds , mortgage rates and dollar values were represented in 8th's 0.125, Now it all makes sense
That time could come again.
"Legislators don't like telling voters no..."
Yeah but has anybody told the legislators that?
They already know. Why else would they guarantee your loan for a house you can't afford or a useless degree?
Interesting history I had no idea existed! The shit high schools and quite frankly, universities don't teach! Thanks Simon; maybe I should pay you tuition since you're compensating the shortcomings of my university education. Oh that's right, patreon! I'll see what I can do!
I collect coins and I found a silver 1964 quarter during this coin shortage. I got it back as change from buying a 15 pack of Coke
Simon...LOVE ALL of your channels!! They are ALL GREAT!!! I've learned a lot of things just by the info I get from you. Everything you do is very well explained, and thorough, and its greatly appreciated.
* Video Idea- I see articles and what not about 1,700 people a DAY in the US, or approx. 4,000 a DAY around the world, who are OFFICIALLY classified as a MILLIONAIRE. Is that correct, and HOW DO THEY KNOW, but even MORE IMPORTANTLY- WHO THE HELL IS "THEY"??????? My enquiring mind must know!!!! 🤑🤷♀️
I had no idea about the berkshares
How this man manages all 324 channels of his I still wonder
Wait one, gold or silver Pent’s.... aww crap, someone already tried that
Whatever day the fed deficit started and hasn’t stopped🤔
A glance at the comments section proves just how little people understand how money works.
it is interesting to note that if you had infinite money it would all be worthless
Ah, I see this video has summoned all the nutcases and goldbugs out of the woodwork.
How do the commercials for the different RUclips channels get chosen?
Wonder if that chaos is related to Americans writing an amount on a piece of paper instead of using bank transfer. Checks seem so antiquated
So if cherry pits contain cyanide and apple seeds contain arsenic, what other foods are slightly poisonous?
2:15 - The original dollar sign having origins with Spain? I can see how some think this, but it seems unlikely. Given how popular the "double-strike" dollar sign is in America whereas overseas it's single strike... I think the fact that it looks more like "U" and "S" superimposed on top of one another is more likely. In fact, historians have tracked down that this was likely done by Robert Morris as an attempt to make a patriotic currency symbol.
The original dollar sign having origins in the sign of a U underneath an S? I can see how some think this, but it seems unlikely. You see, the colonists in the original thirteen colonies did not prefer to use the pound due to its continuously lowered value and instead looked toward the Spanish dollar, hence where the 'S' in the dollar sign ($) came from.
@@Saltiren
Which doesn't explain the double-strike dollar sign, which only appeared after the 1770s when Robert Morris started getting involved in the finance of the war effort. If it was merely based on the Spanish dollar, of which does not even use the symbol, it would use a European single strike dollar sign instead of the double-strike. Further evidence? Okay, one of the first new United States notes made after the civil war featured a "U" and "S" super-imposed over one another to look something like a dollar sign
@@matchesburn I was parodying your comment using the same sentence structure and parroting information Simon said. Lol
The thying is, after the second world war the world basically stopped relying on fiat currency. We are currently employing an economy far greater than our assets.
Since a lot of the general public was illiterate in the 1860's .How in the world did they make all these calculations to spend their money?
Simon Whistler's beard is actually capable of curing COVID-19.
same is going to happen again the USA national debt is 21 trillions $$.
It's actually $27 trillion now
So... we already paid back two trillion? Cool!!!
I mean literally every country is in debt
@@antardas6734 wait in just 5 yrs wow
@@Tacitus_BirchSaw yes thx to China debt trap
Yes
*"Canadian Tire"* money, can sometimes be redeemed elsewhere. :-)
The creature from jekyll island
The pieces of eight thing is also the reason that a US quarter (technically, a quarter-dollar) has the nickname "two bits". So, the next time you tap out the rhythm "Shave-and-a-Haircut", you can join Roger Rabbit in loudly and compulsively completing the jingle with the knowledge that at one point in time, such a service package would only cost you twenty-five cents.
Halfway through writing this, I couldn't resist doing it in the Today I Found Out style.
Has anyone ever gave a funeral eulogy for a person they had killed
Before even watching I'm gonna say this was back when the Gold Standard was in effect. Because under that you can't just have the Treasury print $1 billion whenever you want.
Irony, is watching this video, and having a bank ad come on!
Money printer goes BRRRRRRR
I see what you did there
So the ingenuity of issuing paper money was the people got.......happiness.
Yea..
7:55 Note to the editor: if you're going to use a filter like that to make something look old-timey, please map it to the picture and not the lens.
Thank you,
Someone who just got kicked out of the experience enough to bother writing this
Maybe you could do a video on the panic of 1857 and how it had consequences for the start of the civil war?
Cue all the people complaining about current national debt who don't understand the economic system.
You might want to turn up your mic. Even with the sound all the way u, it is still difficult to hear for some of us.
So we all know the UN, EU and NATO but it be cool if you did a video on the lesser known ones
And now printer goes brrr