Ezra Pound - What is Money For ?

We will never see an end of ructions, we will never have a sane and steady administration until we gain an absolutely clear conception of money. I mean an absolutely not an approximately clear conception. I can, if you like, go back to paper money issued in China in or about A.D. 840, but we are concerned with the vagaries of the Western World. FIRST, Paterson, the founder of the Bank of England, told his shareholders that they would profit because "the bank hath profit on the interest of all the moneys which it creates out of nothing." What then is this "money" the banker can create out of nothing"?

Let us be quite clear. Money is a measured title or claim. That is its basic difference from unmeasured claims, such as a man's right to take all you've got under war-time requisition, or as an invader or thief just taking it all. Money is a measure which the taker hands over when be acquires the goods he takes. And no further formality need occur during the transfer, though sometimes a receipt is given. The idea of justice inheres in ideas of measure, and money is a measure of value. 

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