The Little Money Book

By David Boyle

They say money is the root of all evil. That’s debatable, but one thing that’s not is that money and its attendant enterprises—buying, selling, lending, borrowing, credit cards, the stock market and banking—is an inescapable component of the fabric of modern life. How did this come to be? Money and the complex system that makes it work is a man-made product that we invented and yet, like Frankenstein, it has us all in its grip. From the poorest to the wealthiest, we worry about money.

This highly accessible and easy-to-read synthesis of complex subjects asks some of the obvious questions about money and finance that few of us stop to think about.

For instance, what is the real “value” of money? Well, astonishingly, nobody agrees. But most people seem to accept that it is lent into existence by the commercial banks. When you stash money in the bank, they must keep around 8 percent of that loan on deposit—in case there's a run on the bank—but all the rest is lent out again many times over. In other words, most of our mortgages and bank loans are created as if by magic by a stroke of the pen.

That's the strange truth behind modern money. We don't mine it, we don't find it on a beach, it bears no relation to anything real, but still some people have vast amounts of it and some people have none at all. And we hardly ever talk about it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
• Release date: Apr 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9781934708248

David Boyle

David Boyle is a Lecturer in the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College London. He has more than 14 years experience developing IoT technologies across academia and industry. His research interests lie at the intersection of complex sensing, actuation, and control systems (Cyber-Physical Systems), IoT and sensor network applications, data analytics, and digital economy. David was awarded his PhD in Electronic and Computer Engineering from the University of imerick, Ireland, in 2009, following his B.Eng. (Hons) in Computer Engineering in 2005. His work has been recognized and awarded internationally and published in leading technical journals, including the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics (TIE) and Informatics (TII). He actively participates in a number of Technical Programs and Organizing Committees for the premier conferences in the field. Before joining the Dyson School of Design Engineering in 2018, David was a Research Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College London since 2012. Previously, he worked with theWireless Sensor Network and icroelectronics Applications Integration Groups in the Microsystems Centre at Tyndall National Institute, and the Embedded Systems Research Group, University College Cork, Ireland. Prior to this, he was with France Telecom R&D Orange Labs, France, and a Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar at the Higher Technical School of Telecommunications Engineering, Technical University of Madrid (ETSIT UPM), Spain