“If a society regards governmental manipulation of money as the antidote to economic challenges,” writes Acton research director Samuel Gregg at Public Discourse, “a type of poison will work its way through the body politic, undermining justice and mon good.”

Money: it’s on everyone’s mind sometimes. In recent years, however, many have suggested there are some fundamental problems with the way money presently functions in our economies.

No one is seriously denying money’s unique ability to serve simultaneously as a medium of exchange, a measure and store of value, and a means of calculation. Yet deep reservations about the current workings of the world’s monetary systems, both foreign and domestic, have been expressed by people ranging from Senator Rand Paul (who is fiercely critical of the Federal Reserve), to Pope Francis (who has denounced what he calls “the cult of money”) and France’s François Hollande (who once described “big finance” as his “greatest adversary”).

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