Moneyness: dictionary money

A short article with a high concentration of new-to-me knowledge. “Nick Rowe points out that if a central bank wants to control the economy’s price level, it needn’t issue any actual money—it can just edit the dictionary every morning, announcing the meaning of the word “dollar” or “yen” or “pound” to the public. To a modern ear … the idea of conducting monetary policy by simply editing the meaning of a word seems odd. But I’ve got news for you: starting from Caesar’s time and extending into the 1700s, the sort of dictionary money that Nick describes has been the dominant form of money in the West.“ | learn more