The idea of money

After spending over half an hour phoning three different banks, just so that you can transfer a small sum of money to your aunt, you tend to think about money. About banks. About the nature of money.

The money I put in that bank account is not the money my aunt will draw out. The money I put in my account was probably withdrawn that same day by a costumer at the same branch I used. The money my aunt will withdraw will be money that was in the safe deposit box at her branch, which doesn't even belong to the same company.

What I sent my aunt was not actually, as I said before, a sum of money. It was a debt the bank owed me. I gave my bank money and in return they gave me a book that tells me how much they are in debt to me. And my bank transferred that debt to my aunt's bank. And my aunt took the money that she was owed.

But a debt isn't a solid thing. If the debtor and the lender forget that any money was ever exchanged, does the debt really still exist? If the bank hadn't given me that piece of paper and hadn't written up that debt in their database, what's to say that I ever gave the bank money? Or that they owe it back to me? If something can cease to be if all those who know about forget it exists, does it really exist in the first place?

Banks don't hold money. They hold debt. And debt is, well, it's an idea. So we don't really own money. We own ideas of money. Millionaires don't own millions of dollars or euros or dirhams. They own ideas. Millions of ideas, but still...

Having these ideas can make you very powerful. In theory, you can cash in your ideas and use them to buy clothes or cars or food or a fucking rubber toy for your dog or anything. But the ideas can go away. So many ideas floating around between banks. Some can get lost. Some can be won.

Some can crumble away into dust. We put too high a value on some ideas. Bidding rises, people are buying ideas with debts, debts with ideas and the outside world can't control it and...

Crash.

1929.

1987.

2008.

2014.

Lots of hurt and loss and depression. All because of ideas.

Wonder when the next one will be?