EPILOGUE: THE CURRENCY WARS CHAPTER 8
EPILOGUE: THE CURRENCY WARS Money kills more than do weapons. —Nigerian proverb Although you may not have realized it, this book has traced the history of money through examples in the Agrarian Age, Industrial/Manufacturing Age, and Information Age. In each era, monetary policy and its effects on currency were intertwined with the nature and objectives of political and economic warfare. The pursuit of wealth in the Agrarian Age was achieved through territorial expansion for resource acquisition. Kings, emperors, and warlords aimed to conquer and control territories to increase their wealth and power. The weaponization of food through siege warfare was prevalent: agrarian societies dependent upon food were starved into submission. Monetary policy, as understood in modern terms, did not exist in the same way during the Agrarian Age. However, the acquisition of resources and wealth through warfare was closely tied to economic prosperity by controlling fertile lands and storing the resulting wealth through precious metals. Warfare in the Industrial/Manufacturing Age was directed at destroying the means of production and distribution. Kinetic warfare meant that weapons produced in factories were used to destroy other factories that produced weapons. Central banks and governments issued debt, printed money, or raised taxes to finance conflicts. Funding a conquest could be much easier if money were simply printed out of thin air; and so it was. With the Information Age, we enter a realm of virtual money based on data, and bloodless warfare based on the corruption of information. As Elon Musk put it, “Money is just data that allows us to avoid the inconvenience of barter.” Warfare in the Information Age manifests as asymmetric conflict with the goal of information superiority. Information superiority involves not only obtaining accurate and timely information but also denying or misleading adversaries. Not surprisingly, then, cyber warfare and economic sanctions have emerged as tools that
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