Money has defined the post-1945 world: how to acquire it, invent it, keep it, spend it. Money conferred power, status, legitimacy. Maybe this has been so since the first settled communities thousands of years ago. The second half of the 20th century, though, saw an important sophistication develop, the ascent of money as a commodity class, containing expansive portfolios of elaborately designed gambling products that made small numbers of people exceedingly rich, all the while damaging the economic prospects of everybody else. (more…)