Money is not so complicated. Money is not evil. People are compicated. People can be evil.

My father was an accountant and he genuinely believed that money could corrupt everyone. He once said: "Everyone can be bought at the right price. But the person who is incorruptible has the highest price of all" 

I did not like the idea of money corrupting me so that meant for most of my life I avoided understanding how money worked and I avoided having a bank account for as long as possible.

However, after the horror of 2008 I felt compelled to try and understand what could have caused such a disaster and how it could have happened so fast.
For the next two years I went deep down into the dark secret world of money and discovered that it was not as easy to understand as I first thought. The world of finance seemed more complex than quantum physics (which was a hobby of mine).
 Two years and several break downs later I had a Eurueka moment and suddenly it all began to make sense.
Funny how once you understand things you cant believe how you ever thought it was ever so difficult.
         

The way I taught myself was to go back to the beginning of how money began and then see if I could take apart the concept and simplify it to an idiot. 

Luckily I had a good friend who would play the part of the idiot as he openly admitted that, when it came to money, he was utterly clueless.

My friend is a Christian and one night he confessed to me that he actually had no real understanding  why Jesus became so angry with the money changers. "What the hell was that really all about Arthur?" He asked. 

 Considering Jesus had been dealing with murderers, adulterers, thieves and so on and kept his cool dealing with such folk.  But as soon as he saw people changing one coin into another coin in the Temple, he completely went berserk.  
What was actually so wrong with this?

This is how I explained the matter to my idiot friend:

It is a reasonable idea to suggest that you need some kind of regular funding in order to keep a building in good condition. In this case we are talking about a building that was used for people to go inside to worship their God.
They called this building a "Temple"
Anyway the priests of this temple got the idea that regular worshipers could perhaps pay an entrance fee and the money from this which would go towards the upkeep of the Temple building. They called this fee "Temple tax".
It would be rather like having an entrance fee to go into a church today. 
Well the idea started well but problems quickly arose because there were all sorts of different currencies (coins) in those days. Arab coins, Roman coins, Greek coins etc.  (Rather like all the crytpo-coins we have today)

The main problem was that, in those days, most people did not even own any coins because they were farmers or goat herders and so on. Therefore, how could they pay this tax/entrance fee?

In reality what happened was that these folk tried to pay this "temple tax" with a goat or a chicken.
But how do you decide/agree on the price of a chicken or a goat?  The Temple priests ended up spending hours trying to decide if someone should pay with two chickens or one goat. This made the whole matter far too messy 

In the end the temple priests got together with some local wealthy citizens and came up with the idea of creating a new special type of coin . This coin could be used exclusively to pay this temple-tax/entrance fee. 
No other types of currency (coins) would be allowed. They even decided to give this coin a name.
No, it was not Bitcoin or even Temple coin but the "shekel".

Due to this new coin coming into existence, this then created a new type of job. Instead of the Temple priest bargaining with farmers a special person would do it for them. They came to be called "money-changers".
Basically these people would take someones goat evaluate its value and and give this person  a shekel  or shekels in return. However, these money changers also wanted paying for doing this job. So it was decided that they could charge a fee of which the farmer wold also have to pay.

Again, a the beginning it started well, however, after a while these money-changers began to realize that they had total control over the value of one "shackel" and started to take advantage of their unique position. 

They started to charge extortionate fees for doing the "changing" and increased the value of one shackle by whatever price they felt like.  In effect they could swindle everyone and there was nothing anyone could do about it, except perhaps the temple priests.  In this case it seems the priests turned a blind eye and as usual it was the poor who suffered while the money-changers got rich. 
In the same way as this fantastic money making scam,  this practice still goes on today but far more advanced.
Have you ever changed Dollars into French francs an been charged a high fee?
                   

Now, if like me you find this was morally outrageous, then we are not alone because apparently so did another guy at the time and this guy was called "Jesus".
Anyway when this Jesus fellow saw what was going on and became totally pissed off. In fact he was so pissed off that he almost lost him mind and started kicking over the tables of these money-changing swindlers and even whipped them with some kind of rope. It probably made the news.
Some historians believed that this Jesus fellow was the first to really draw attention to this immoral practice.


The idea of a coin to represent a standard item of value was a a good one.
It was easier than having to to carry a chicken or drag a goat in order to pay for something.
Having a fund to help pay for the up keep of the Temple building was also a good idea. None of these two ideas or the intention behind them were evil.
What was evil was the greed of the men who totally abused their trusted position to cheat hard working folk who could not afford to be cheated in the first place.
End of story.

Thanks for reading and for visiting my blog and I wish you a warm welcome back next time.