How to Understand the Monetary System

The reason the global monetary system survives is largely thanks to the public’s blissful ignorance of exactly how it works. To paraphrase one familiar analogy, if you knew how sausage was made, would you still eat it? It’s probably safe to say that the vast majority of the world’s citizens have no clue that the integrity of the currency they work for, save and use as a medium of exchange every day rests on nothing more tangible than their respective governments’ authority to and solemn promise to tax them in the future.