Bernard Lietaer - The Future of Money - Full Book

The Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun claimed that 'God created the two precious metals, gold and silver, to serve as a measure of all commodities.. .' Without further need for intervention by any religious institution, gold and silver remained symbolically associated respectively with the sun and moon. For centuries, their prices stabilized mysteriously in a fixed ratio of 1/13.5, astrologically determined to reflect the heavenly cycles. These two metals remained divinely ordained currencies after the astrological justification was long forgotten. There are many people who, to this day, claim that 'real' money would be a return to the gold standard. Some even keep invoking its biblical origins."

There is some irony in the fact that the almighty dollar is no exception to this mystical phenomenon. Issued by a country with a scrupulous separation between Church and State since its founding, where school prayers can still stir a heated debate, the most ordinary one-dollar bill has as motto, 'In God we Trust'. That same bill is illustrated with both sides of the Great Seal of the United States. That seal has been described by Joseph Campbell as extraordinarily laden with esoteric symbols (see sidebar).

It can be fascinating to discover the next supporting mystique.

Liberia, for instance, issued its legal tender coinage with the portraits of Captain James T. Kirk and Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise, paying royalties to Viacom, owner of the Star Trek trademarks, in the process." Until recently, it was the fashion to design banks to look like temples, complete with reverence lingering inside them. Even the first Internet bank, the First Security National Bank, with only an Internet address and no physical customer branch, felt the need to bow to custom by using a Greek Revival bank building as its first Web page symbol.