The Mystery of Banking

I am a biologist with an economics fetish. If I had to do a PhD over again maybe that's something I'd like to study. So I was reading this pdf book, called the The Mystery of Banking. It was a very insightful read, particularly during this financial crisis. It seems that an understanding of money: how it is created, destroyed, and how it flows to add value to our lives (or not)-- that explains a lot about how the world works. And why the status quo today is just so. I also didn't know much about what the Federal Reserve does exactly, how the modern banking system works, and where the money for the bailout package is actually coming from. . . and this book explains that.

I am not totally sure about whether we should go back to a gold standard or limit the inflationery creation of money as the book suggests. By some accounts, inflation may be a good thing. But it is clear that the entities involved with the creation of money has a lot of power. As with any kind of power, it can be used for social good. Or not. Financial stability is a social good in and of itself, I suppose. Maybe this is a "guns don't kill people, people kill people" idea, amidst a larger moral question of whether guns can ever be used for good. And of course, the idea of whether any one should be entrusted with such power at all, ever. Yeah, I like economics because I am confused by it.