  This review is about the convenience, the benefits, as well as the
destructive capacities of money. It deals with various aspects of money
creation, with its value, and its appropriation. All sorts of money tend to get
corrupted by eventually creating too much of them. In the long run, this
renders money worthless and deprives people holding it. This misuse of money
creation is inevitable and should come as no surprise. Abusive money creation
comes in various forms. In the present fiat money system "suspended in free
thought" and sustained merely by our belief in and our conditioning to it,
money is conveniently created out of "thin air" by excessive government
spending and speculative credit creation. Alas, any too tight money supply
could ruin an economy by inviting all sorts of unfriendly takeovers, including
wars or competition. Therefore the ambivalence of money as benefactor and
destroyer should be accepted as destiny.
