Mar 17, 2023
In March 2014 the world's oldest central bank, the Bank of England (BoE), did every advocate of sound money a big but unintentional favor by publishing an official introduction to and an official detailed account of unsound money. Given both the importance of and the lack of publicity regarding these two seminal papers over the past nine years, even here at mises.org, the focus in this piece will be on quoting some of the BoE's "greatest hits." (This approach was also taken by this author in 2020 when quoting from the Black Lives Matter website prior to its being scrubbed.) Modern Money Introduction The BoE sets the stage in the paper "Money in the Modern Economy: An Introduction" by defining money in terms of the following three important roles: The first role of money is to be a store of value-something that is expected to retain its value in a reasonably predictable way over time. . . . Money's second role is to be a unit of account-the thing that goo