David Boyle - Funny Money - In Search of Alternative Cash

It is almost de rigueur for the British to be cynical about the USA, to deride its traditions and sneer at its judicial system, gun culture and bizarre romanticism, but I don’t share that sense of superiority. There is a welcoming generosity there, combined with energy and imagination, which I find inspiring. Americans also seem to touch the source of money more closely than we do, and amid their undoubted difficulties, it seems to give them a sense of liberation – however tough the business of earning money may be to them at the time.

So by visiting the sources of money in the USA, and tracking down the people who are reinventing those sources and bringing them closer to home, I wanted to write about that liberation – maybe get some of it to rub off on to my life too – and enter that peculiar alchemical world where money gets conjured apparently out of nothing.

Because for someone brought up with the picture of sober-suited City gents, serious bank managers and careful budgeting, the US money system is enjoyably non-rational. Vast sums slosh across their computer screens, yet the pockets of poverty are even denser than they are in London or Liverpool or Glasgow. This is, after all, both the richest and the most indebted nation on earth, where astrologers earn a great deal of money predicting financial patterns to Wall Street analysts, and where dogs get sent credit cards even without applying for them.

But then Zabau Shepard wasn’t able to actually use them: she found it hard to sign her name. It’s good to know there are some safeguards.

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