currency

I was daydreaming over the weekend. The subject: notable intellectual epiphanies I’ve experienced in the course of my life. These are moments when someone reveals something to you that shakes you up. It runs contrary to everything you ever thought possible. You resist it at first, but can’t come up with a proof to the …

Kings used to “clip” and “sweat” coins constantly to pad the government treasury. Coins would be called in and filed around the edges, with the resulting loose metal coined into new currency for the government to spend. This practice has gone the way of the buggy whip, with the Federal Reserve conjuring up billions from the ether with the ease of a keystroke.