We have become accustomed to living in a stable monetary system. We’ve inherited this stability from the economists who analyzed World War II. Keynes predicted in 1919 that the unequal terms of the Versailles treaty would cause hardship in years to come. The resulting inflation from the high war payments forced upon Germany caused the german currency to drop in value from 14 per U.S. dollar in 1919 to 4 trillion at the end of the german depression in 1923. By wiping out the assets of the middle class (which were generally financial), it eliminated it’s moderating influence.

Another recent example is Germany after the War. The West Zone and the East Zone shared a currency beginning in 1945. The Soviets also got printing plates, and using them within weeks were able to extra hundreds of millions of dollars worth of goods. RM were stopped as form of payment to troops, and cigarettes became the common currency. A new currency, the deutschemark was introduced. On that day, the soviet military blockaded Berlin.

These were just two examples of the impact of currency politics on human history. They are sufficiently distant to be fairly well understood, yet sufficiently recent for their true significance to be clear also. Human history is literally full of such interplay of money and civilization.

This lesson is not lost on the leaders of today. The technology and politics of money has the ability to change the balance of power, between nations as well as between classes. The advent of radically new technologies for monetary transactions will literally affect the lives of billions, as well as creating and destroying fortunes. This will effectively block any radical changes to our current monetary systems within the foreseeable feature.