By Johan Galtung*
15 August 2016 – TRANSCEND Media Service – Money is the key: that genius innovation for storing general value and exchanging specific values according to price. Not strange, that heads of state had their faces imprinted on coins and bills.
Johan Galtung
But not on cents and euros. The EU is faceless. Brexit is not.
Coins and bills are fading; not money, capital, and its growth. Look at The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger by Greg Steinmetz, brilliantly reviewed by Martha Howell (TNYRB, 7 Apr 2016). Born in 1459, in that pivot German city Augsburg, he died in 1515, and here is how he used the system:
“Fugger expanded his business from trade and used his ability to provide ready credit in order to secure rights to productive assets, such as mines that reliably yielded returns over considerable periods of time. He made princes, in this case the Habsburgs dependent on his money. He financed their elections to the sponsorship, extended loans to pay their armies, and bribed their enemies to keep them at bay.”
Sounds familiar? Half a millennium ago. Solid. There is more to it:
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