Money and Banking: What Everyone Should Know [repost]

From the invention of coins by the ancient Lydians to the 21st-century eurozone, human history tells the story of ingenious financial systems and the never-ending quest for economic solutions. Today, our global economy is both fascinating and dizzyingly complex—challenging even experts to comprehend it fully. But one thing remains clear: Money and finance play a deeply fundamental role in your life.

Money is a social contract that affects the decisions of nations and individuals. Our financial institutions drive our political systems and the growth of nations. And money and banking are indispensable in both your daily financial transactions and your most essential long-term plans. A working knowledge of money and banking systems is critically useful in several ways:

It helps you understand the complex and often bewildering world of finance.
It helps you to "read" the current economic climate, to make sense of what you see in the media, and to gauge where the economy is headed.
It gives you key insights into society and the economic issues in life.
It allows you to comprehend integral aspects of history and the way civilization developed.
Perhaps most important, it helps you to plan your own life and to make key financial decisions for yourself and your family.

Speaking to all of this in Money and Banking: What Everyone Should Know, economist and award-winning Professor Michael K. Salemi of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill leads you in a panoramic exploration of our monetary and financial systems, their inner workings, and their crucial role and presence in your world. In 36 incisive and detailed lectures, he gives you a penetrating look at the financial institutions that are fundamental to your life and well-being. Beginning with the colorful history of money, including the monetary history of the United States, you investigate pivotal topics, including

the crucial role of public confidence in the stability of our financial system;
how money is created by commercial and central banks;
how "Wall Street" and "Main Street" are inextricably intertwined, each requiring the success of the other;
the dramatic history and causes of hyperinflation;
the uses of "local" currencies and nontraditional monetary systems;
the thorny problem of financial firms that are deemed "too big to fail," and why being named "TBTF" gives firms an incentive to engage in risky investments;
the irrational psychology of stock market "bubbles," in which investing becomes speculative gambling; and
why the value of the dollar depends on interest rates elsewhere in the world.


Lectures:

The Importance of Money
Money as a Social Contract
How Is Money Created?
Monetary History of the United States
Local Currencies and Nonstandard Banks
How Inflation Erodes the Value of Money
Hyperinflation Is the Repudiation of Money
Saving—The Source of Funds for Investment
The Real Rate of Interest
Financial Intermediaries
Commercial Banks
Central Banks
Present Value
Probability, Expected Value, and Uncertainty
Risk and Risk Aversion
An Introduction to Bond Markets
Bond Prices and Yields
How Economic Forces Affect Interest Rates
Why Interest Rates Move Together
The Term Structure of Interest Rates
Introduction to the Stock Market
Stock Price Fundamentals
Stock Market Bubbles and Irrational Exuberance
Derivative Securities
Asymmetric Information
Regulation of Financial Firms
Subprime Mortgage Crisis and Reregulation
Interest Rate Policy at the Fed and ECB
The Objectives of Monetary Policy
Should Central Banks Follow a Policy Rule?
Extraordinary Tools for Extraordinary Times
Central Bank Independence
The Foreign Exchange Value of the Dollar
Exchange Rates and International Banking
Monetary Policy Coordination
Challenges for the Future


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