For the average person, money is something of almost absurd simplicity. It’s a piece of paper emblazoned with some old guy’s portrait, helping people turn their work hours at McKinsey into Bean Boots and Canada Goose jackets. Does it really warrant any more thinking than that? Money holds some sort of value and can be exchanged for things. It’s such a fundamental facet of Western culture that to most, the concept never could warrant too much scrutiny.
To put it simply, Professor Wheelan’s book takes that notion by the throat and thrusts it under the guillotine. Something so purportedly elementary – a fundamental aspect of everyday life – is revealed to be so spectacularly complex. The opening pages present some of currency’s craziest antics, debunking any common preconceptions off the bat and setting a blank slate off of which Wheelan builds entirely new definition of money. He manages to take something outwardly simple, render it outrageously complicated, and then slowly put the pieces back together in a more coherent fashion – an immense undertaking, but one which he is able to accomplish with an awesome lucidity. Suddenly, money becomes more than just a piece of paper.
Naked Money is inseparable from Wheelan’s personality. His tone is lighthearted and colloquial, making his work an easy read for any reasonable adult. He’s particularly talented at distracting readers from the academic nature of his writing. With innumerable references to his kids and family – even a run-in with his daughter’s controversial boyfriend – he comes across, well, as a dad, not the typical breed of insipid academic. While this certainly does a great deal to transform money-talk from Wall Street jargon into comprehensible English, it definitely creates some obstacles for Wheelan as a writer. Only on a select few occasions does he trip on the temptation of a trite remarks and dad-jokes, but regardless, he successfully circumvents the ordinary lecture-like style that all-too-commonly embodies academic boringness. Altogether, Wheelan’s quirks turn a college economics class into an engaging read. However, while the text flows smoothly, the subject matter itself may not the most accessible. Having studied macroeconomics before reading the book, some of the terminology used up-front could fathomably be somewhat confusing to somebody new to the topic. The first few pages certainly invoked some callbacks to my class with Professor Freyrer – one of Wheelan’s colleagues listed in the foreword – and that itself is a sign that there might be some unintended prerequisite knowledge. Still, I nonetheless contend that Naked Money is a great choice for anyone interested in the topic, maybe even without prior experience.
Now, being interested in economics is certainly different than being willing to read a 300-page book on money, but if there’s one thing that stands out from the first page of Wheelan’s work, it’s that he is quite talented at continuously catching the reader’s attention. His writing is peppered with humorous analogies and cultural references, which makes the text relatable. For instance, he teleports readers to a bar in ‘90s Zimbabwe to explain the disasters of a deflationary spiral: “Let me interrupt your reverie about falling beer prices and allow you to contemplate a less attractive chain of events,” he asks. And this inclusion isn’t alone; Wheelan does well at representing complex ideas with familiar concepts. But, speaking of the inclusion of beer specifically, one of my favorite references – and certainly one with an almost uncanny predictive value – is located in his discussion of a theoretical rice-farming economy to explain credit failure:
“We now rejoin our farming hamlet, where the village council has appointed a Rice Panic Inquest Commission, Elizabeth Warren is running for chief elder, and angry farmers with pitchforks have surrounded the rice storehouses.”
Unfortunately for Elizabeth Warren, there’s no mention of beer in this rice economy. How now will she connect with those young rice-farming voters?
On the subject of politicians, well, it’s relatively obvious that Wheelan has a good deal of contempt for them, and that sentiment rears its head recurrently throughout his work. The most fervent instance is his discussion of former Congressman Ron Paul’s influential book End the Fed, where he makes his case against the titular proposition. I’m not going to argue that Wheelan doesn’t present some solid contentions, and in fact I think that he makes some very good points, but I altogether wish that this section was never included. While I certainly wouldn’t call the segment partisan, I think his approach to it has the potential to alienate some readers. Similar is the case when he quotes Ted Cruz defending the gold standard after a chapter of telling his audience that it’s an utterly awful idea. It’s not that his points aren’t valid, but it’s that he completely misunderstands why politicians are taking these stances in the first place. Wheelan had prefaced all of these discussions advocating for strong, independent central banking, and he even mentioned the almost absurd amount of power invested in the Fed chairman as a result. What he failed to acknowledge was that, while the Federal Reserve has tremendous potential to be an incredible asset to this country, it equally has the potential to ruin it, never mind that the reigns are out of the hands of the American citizenry and under the control of unelected bureaucrats. He even outlines how the Fed enormously exacerbated the Great Depression, talks about their historical lack of transparency, and yet he continues to shed little sympathy upon the skeptics. Any conservative opposition to the United States’ central bank has always been principally a power issue—perhaps no other post in the American government has the potential to turn more tyrannical, even unintentionally—and that’s reasonably quite intimidating to those who continuously advocate for smaller, more transparent government. Again, Wheelan makes some great arguments, but they wholly fail to counter the underlying dissent, and I think that takes away from the wider credibility of his work.
Another critique of mine, which may be rendered entirely invalid in due time, is his praise of Ben Bernanke for his actions during the 2008 recession, and certainly his advocation for quantitative easing as a form of ameliorating it. Surprisingly enough, Wheelan doesn’t shy away from pointing out the ways in which the Fed’s aggressive policy could fuel future turmoil, though he clumps them all at the end of the book after a whole couple hundred pages’ worth of praise. The tone all throughout seemed to be that Bernanke had done an objectively good job, and then he throws in at the end that the results are still up in the air. Especially after contending so strongly that the Fed’s critics are misguided, it was almost disorienting to hear him say that the book’s model Federal Reserve Chairman might be revealed to have done everything completely wrong after a couple decades’ worth of time. Again, I would argue that Wheelan could profit from leaving out more subjective judgements from his descriptions of public figures; in some cases, it’s alienating, and in other cases, it can be confusing, but either way, I don’t think it’s entirely befitting of an introductory-type book altogether.
With all things considered, my criticisms tend to be minor nitpicks instead of major reworkings; Professor Wheelan has authored a beautiful guidebook to the inner workings of currency, something that the world could probably use much more of. It’s stunning the degree to which the factors that he discusses affect the daily life of the average individual, and it’s scary that Americans don’t know more about the system in which they’re quite literally staking their entire livelihoods. It’s certainly much more dynamic than I ever could have expected and, if more everyday people knew more of the power vested in the unelected officials at the Federal Reserve, they would likely have a permanently altered view of the cash in their pockets. Of course, Wheelan’s intention was never to scare – he certainly didn’t render me any more skeptical of government – but the reality is that there’s a lot more to the dollar bill, and the concept of currency in general, than I ever could have expected. There’s undoubtedly a lot more that the standard American ought to know.
Naked Money is an engaging read that outlines world currency systems with stellar clarity. I would strongly recommend Professor Wheelan’s book to anybody interested in the topic. Even if the subject of economics doesn’t sound all too appealing, Wheelan does a remarkable job of tying in the subject matter to contemporary life, offering a world-altering perspective and incredible revelation into how little people truly know about one of society’s most important cornerstones. It’s a must-read introduction for anyone seeking fiscal awareness, a revealing crash-course on the basic fundamentals of world economies, and it will truly leave readers wondering how they went for so long knowing oh-so little.
Great grasp of the subject. It is after all the root of all evil. Kudos to a review worth reading.
Money is mark of sovereignty, symbol of nation/state, cultural barometer, primary source material for a historian,and mark of an advanced civilization. Money registers a culture’s evolution. Ancient examples of sovereignty include Christ’s encounter with the Pharisees and the Athenian coinage decree. Modern example of sovereignty is Union’s creation of irredeemable currency.
As Bray Hammond remarked in Sovereignty and an Empty Purse: As money the greenbacks were another example of what had often been done before in falling back on government credit in the last resort. But as an exercise of sovereignty they advanced the national government’s powers far beyond what had ever been ascribed to it before. They lifted federal powers not merely beyond what had ever been ascribed to it before. They lifted federal powers not merely above those of the states, above the limitations set by the tenth amendment, and above the bold attributions of Hamilton and Marshall, to a mystical level, where contrary to the latter’s dictum, the nature of a thing could be changed by giving it, through legislative enactment, a new name.
Hammond is incorrect. Federal government always had high cards such as entering treaties, impairing contracts, raising armies, declaring war, entering treaties, delivering mail, enforcing a uniform set of weights and measures and designating a legal tender.
Americans are only race to have created the State–Hobbes’ artificial man leviathan–by contract. The Constitution arises from experiences with colonial charters and failings of Articles of Confederation. Study Hamilton’s remarks in Federalist #1.