Money Signals Exchanges . . . Or not.

Is it this?


or is it this?


It depends how you look at it.
With different lenses you see different things.
You think what you think because you see what you see.
You see what you see depending on the lens and the focus.

Humans have a collection of lenses.
They grow from the narratives in their information space.
Some narratives are logical.
Some narratives are natural.

Sometimes logical narratives help predict the future.
Sometimes natural narratives help predict the future.
But only natural narratives are for now.
Humans only live in now.

Humans expect a future and remember a past.
Money is a signal for both.
Money makes visible the wisdom of the crowd about the future.
Money gives clues about what was happening then and is happening now.

Money is information.
Money signals time invested in the past.
Money signals potential power.
Life is about power.

Money turns into power when it enters physical space.
Money is a catalyst that crystallizes strings into activity spaces.
Humans move through activity spaces.
Real life happens in activity spaces.

Meanwhile money can make more money.
Money moves through information space.
People make bets on the future and win or lose money.
Banks give now-money in exchange for future-money.

Governments can create money.
In the US, the Treasury buys U.S.A. government bonds.
The bonds signal future-money.
Buying and selling doesn't change the overall amount of money.

But when the Treasury buys it trades new now-money for future-money.
In the old days, they printed new now-money.
These days now-money lives as information in databases.
That information then moves into activity spaces.

Money can change the world when it enters activity spaces.
Once in the activity space it energizes movements in physical space.
Money can grow unnaturally when it stays in information space.
There used to be $66 trillion of money in the CDS market.

Information space has almost no friction.
Money can move with few impediments.
Money that grows only in information space looks like a signal.
But often money signals are drowned in noise.

Mostly people need now-money.
To manage the risks of the future people need future-money.
For people the future is no more than 70 years.
For tribes, families and formal organizations it can be much longer.

In a recent post over at WTT, Dr Joe Webb said,

As I have been speaking to various printing groups over the past few months, I have asked how many of the attendees adjust their previous financial statements for inflation when they work on budgets and plans for the next year. Trends using unadjusted or “current dollars” can be misleading. After all, it's purchasing power of the dollars that matters, not the dollars themselves. These are the latest multipliers to use for analysis of past years.

I have been recommending that it would be judicious to assume an inflation rate of 6% for 2009 planning purposes.