Detailed history of money, debt, and how the economic system we have now came to be. Well researched and reasoned book. It shows that "the economy" we have now is just a relatively new invention and developed closely related to slavery and war.

"Money's capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic--and by doing so, to justify things that would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene."

"The idea that there is something called 'the market' is not so very different. Economists will often admit this, if you ask them in the right way. Markets aren't real. They are mathematical models, created by imagining a self-contained world where everyone has exactly the same motivation and the same knowledge and is engaged in the same self-interested calculating exchange. Economists are aware that reality is always more complicated; but they are also aware that to come up with a mathematical model, one always has to make the world into a bit of a cartoon. There's nothing wrong with this. The problem comes when it enables some (often these same economists) to declare that anyone who ignores the dictates of the market shall surely be punished--or that since we live in a market system, everything (except government interference) is based on principles of justice: that our economic system is one vast network of reciprocal relations in which, in the end, the accounts balance and all the debts are paid."

"Modern money is based on government debt, and that governments borrow money in order to finance wars. This is just as true today as it was in the age of King Phillip II."

"Just as the United States had managed to largely get rid of the problem of political corruption by making the bribery of legislators effectively legal (it was redefined as 'lobbying'), so the problem of loan-sharking was brushed aside by making real interest rates of 25 percent, 50 percent, or even in some cases (for instance, for payday loans) up to 6,000 percent annually, the sort of numbers that would once have made the mafia blush, perfectly legal--and therefore, enforceable no longer by just hired goons and the sort of people who place mutilated animals on their victims' doorsteps, but by judges, lawyers, bailiffs, and police."

When Carrer del Ferrocarril ends on Carrer Calvell, you will find, on the sidewalk of Carrer Calvell closest to the sea a traffic sign that says "atencio vianants autobus en dos sentits". Debt is hidden behind the traffic sign protected inside 3 transparent plastic bags. Enjoy the hunt.