Letter: Faith and finances

I don't understand money, not just the weird stuff like Bitcoin but regular dollars and cents. Why, I ask myself, can I go to Starbucks and give the person behind the counter a piece of paper with the number five on it, and get a cup of coffee in return? The answer, it seems to me, can only be that the Starbucks person believes that that same piece of paper can be handed to another person, who will then supply Starbucks with coffee beans.

In turn, that person has faith that the piece of paper can be passed on to yet another person who will grow the coffee beans. And that person, when taking a break from coffee bean growing, is confident that the piece of paper can be taken to Starbucks and exchanged for a cup of coffee.

In other words, it appears that our financial system is one giant pyramid scheme, kept afloat by faith. If something happens that significantly shakes that faith, such as a failure to resolve the debt limit issue, the whole house-of-cards-type edifice could collapse. What the ensuing result would be I don't know, but I strongly suspect that I would need something a lot more tangible than a piece of paper to get a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

Dick Page

Naperville