Understanding Money and the Economy
Stone Money is a new concept that I was recently introduced to through my learning experience. I thought it was a weird concept, especially as someone living in the United States and used to the currency we uphold today. This led me to doing research more into Stone Money to truly understand the idea and way it is used on the island of Yap. Listening to the The Invention of Money by the NPR podcast team and reading The Island of Stone Money which was written by Milton Friedman, began to help me understand the true meaning of Fei, the stone money. Not only did I begin to understand the true meaning of Fei, but it also began to introduce other countries around the world, including America, and their concept of money, how it is so different from what I am used to.
Fei, or commonly known as Stone Money is the currency of Yap. They are large thick round stone wheels that have a hole in the center and sit along the island as described in The Island of Stone Money. This made me think, just how different these two currencies are, Fei being the large stone that isn’t transferred hand to hand, but transferred in ownership, unlike the dollar. Especially how in the NPR broadcast Ira and Jacob state the following, “You don’t need to have the stone to own the stone,” which just boggled my mind. My thoughts being that the stone may not be in one’s possession, but people know that that is their stone. I was curious as to how they would know that is their stone, do they put a sign out to make it known? I would assume there are quite a bit of people on the island so how do they not get confused? Those were questions I had while reading the article and listening to the podcast. However, it just seems that everyone is aware of who owns which stone.
Yap islanders first became accustomed to this lifestyle generations ago when the ancestors of the many families were overseas. Within Friedman’s article, we learn to understand after being on an expedition after Fei, they secured the Fei with intentions to take it back to the island but a storm arose on the sea. Meaning they had to cut adrift, but when they arrived back home they had told the others what had happened, but the stone on the bottom of the sea floor still has their value. Learning the value really intrigued me, even when learning that the stones with black crosses were worth more than the average Fei.
Not only do we have the Yap Fei currency, but countries such as Brazil and France have their own ways with money as well. Both countries were brought up, one in NPR and the other in Friedman article. This dives into another perspective of money, that as an American, I may not fully understand. Through this I gained an understanding of how the Fei currency truly works, but there are so many different countries that have their own currency, their own way of life, and their own currency issues.
As discussed in NPR’s podcast Brazil ruined their currency value overall. Brazil had lived with this high inflation for a few decades. President after President tried to change that, but nothing worked. The inflation was still horrid and high. This was all until a group of four friends who were friends in school, changed the currency completely. This group worked with the government to change the currency and to fix the inflation problem. Before all of this the president’s plans were awful, the one in 1990 tried to reduce, but shutting down bank accounts and taking away their money, this led to his impeachment. March 27, 1993 is when the group of four were really introduced and asked to help solve this issue. This group decided to create a virtual currency, called URV and everything was switched to these URVs which was a now semi-stable currency. This led to the inflation to go down rapidly over a few months, then finally a new total currency was revealed, the Real. Everyone within Brazil was tricked into believing this currency was real and had value, which led to now Brazil having one of the best economies in the world. This whole idea is mind-blowing to see just how over two years, Brazil’s economy went from one of the worst to one of the best in the world. How the government and the group of four were able to get away with tricking so many people into the new currency. To think how their economy is flourishing just because of that.
Now although Brazil was trying to get rid of their inflation it seems other countries may have the opposite idea. In The Curious Case of Japan’s Economic Stimulus, Paul Krugman explores the idea of Japan’s economy back in 2009 to 2013 and how they wanted to stop deflation. Krugman quoted from a New York Times article about how Japan had put in an emergency stimulus spending of 10 trillion yen, as well as just putting more money into the economy to take this action. Mr. Abe, who was prime minister at the time, wanted to decrease this deflation in order to have businesses invest more and consumers spend more. It’s really intriguing to see how different Japan was at this time compared to other countries, wanting to increase inflation while many other countries like Brazil and America highly wanted to decrease their inflation.
After learning about these different countries and their currencies it really allowed me to learn more about the topic, as well as the economic goals for some countries. Such as how Yap uses Fei, a stone currency, Japan trying to increase their inflation, and lastly the Brazil inflation crisis and the introduction of a new currency. It was interesting to truly understand how these all relate to money, as well as just how different my knowledge is the the rest of the world.
Citations
Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.
“The Invention of Money.” This American Life, 19 Feb. 2018, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money.
Krugman, Paul, et al. “The Curious Case of Japan’s Economic Stimulus.” Truthout, Truthout, 22 Jan. 2013, https://truthout.org/articles/the-curious-case-of-japans-economic-stimulus/.
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Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
You’ll have to guide me here, RushHour. We can address broad issues of content and organization or narrow details of language use, sentence structure, phrasing. I’ll also need to know whether you plan to revise your work or whether you’d just like an overall assessment to understand how your work compares to your classmates’ and the grading curve. Before I spend an hour on your essay, which I will gladly do, I need to know how committed you are to improving it. I’ll remove this temporarily from the Feedback Please category. You can put it back in, along with your Reply, to let me know it needs my attention again. Thanks!
To be honest with you, I pretty much just want overall feedback. As of now I am not super specific about what feedback I am looking from you. My thoughts are just small grammar issues I may have overlooked, sentences that don’t make sense and more. The only other thing I guess I am worried about is it how you wanted it, as well as do I express the topics as needed?
Thanks, RushHour!
1. small grammar issues I may have overlooked
—The “or” comes out, and you missed an essential comma to set off the expression “commonly known as Stone Money.” So:
Fei, commonly known as Stone Money, is the currency of Yap.
—This is a type of runon called a “comma splice.” It’s an illegal jamming together of two sentences that require a period or a semicolon but which are spliced together with a comma. Totally illegal. You have alternatives:
1. I was curious how they would know this was their stone. Did they put a sign out to make it known?
2. I was curious how they would know this was their stone; did they put a sing out to make it known?
3. I speculated that they would put out a sign to let others know this was their stone.
Everything in my examples is in past tense. Once you choose “would know,” you’ve decided on past tense, so “do” becomes “did”; “is” becomes “was.”
—”a bit of people” would be, for example, some flesh from the bicep.
—You have two independent clauses here. We’ll need a comma.
So: I would assume there are quite a few people on the island, so how do they not get confused?
—Sets of commas are used like parentheses to set off phrases. With actual parentheses, yours would look like this:
This dives into another perspective of money that (as an American) I may not fully understand.
So: This dives into another perspective of money that, as an American, I may not fully understand.
—You didn’t punctuate the article title.
In “The Curious Case of Japan’s Economic Stimulus,” Paul Krugman explores the idea of Japan’s economy.
—The word for APA Citations is “References” without the quotation marks.
References
Not bold. Not italicized. Not in Quotes. Centered over the references.
2. Sentences that don’t make sense
We’re still working on grammar now, RushHour, but not the little punctuation things. You write fragments, which are hard to spot if you’re not used to thinking about them. I’m going to show you a few from your work. See if you can spot the problem:
—Especially how in the NPR broadcast Ira and Jacob state the following, “You don’t need to have the stone to own the stone,” which just boggled my mind.
—My thoughts being that the stone may not be in one’s possession, but people know that that is their stone.
—Meaning they had to cut adrift, but when they arrived back home they had told the others what had happened, but the stone on the bottom of the sea floor still has their value.
—How the government and the group of four were able to get away with tricking so many people into the new currency.
—To think how their economy is flourishing just because of that.
—Such as how Yap uses Fei, a stone currency, Japan trying to increase their inflation, and lastly the Brazil inflation crisis and the introduction of a new currency.
I’ll be happy to show you the fix for this problem if you don’t see the pattern.
2. Sentences that don’t make sense
You have another writer’s tic I imagine you don’t notice yourself, RH. It doesn’t completely deprive your sentences of meaning, but it badly weakens them. One paragraph in particular uses “this” and “that” and “these” and “it” so often we can easily lose our way.
As discussed in NPR’s podcast Brazil ruined their currency value overall. Brazil had lived with this high inflation for a few decades. President after President tried to change that, but nothing worked. The inflation was still horrid and high. This was all until a group of four friends who were friends in school, changed the currency completely. This group worked with the government to change the currency and to fix the inflation problem. Before all of this the president’s plans were awful, the one in 1990 tried to reduce, but shutting down bank accounts and taking away their money, this led to his impeachment. March 27, 1993 is when the group of four were really introduced and asked to help solve this issue. This group decided to create a virtual currency, called URV and everything was switched to these URVs which was a now semi-stable currency. This led to the inflation to go down rapidly over a few months, then finally a new total currency was revealed, the Real. Everyone within Brazil was tricked into believing this currency was real and had value, which led to now Brazil having one of the best economies in the world. This whole idea is mind-blowing. To think how their economy is flourishing just because of that.
In many cases, the confusion caused by “this” results from your readers’ inability to identify your antecedent, the word or phrase or concept for which the “this” is supposed to be a replacement. Several fixes are possible. Consider the following. It’s your entire paragraph in about two-thirds the words:
As discussed in NPR’s podcast Brazil ruined its economy with decades of high inflation. President after President tried to stabilize the economy, but nothing was successful until a group of four school friends worked with the government to alter the currency completely. Earlier plans had been awful, such as the 1990 decision to shut down bank accounts and remove their funds which led to the president’s impeachment. In 1993, the group of four created a virtual currency called URV (units of real value), and everything was switched to this semi-stable currency. After inflation declined rapidly over a few months, a totally new currency was revealed: the Real. Brazilians were tricked into believing this currency was real and had value, which transformed Brazil’s economy into one of the world’s best. The idea that their economy was rescued by a lie blew my mind.
The primary trick here is to choose real subjects for your sentences and use strong clear verbs for them: The group created. Everything was switched. Inflation declined. Currency was revealed. Brazilians were tricked. The trick transformed. The idea blew my mind.
Can we leave your other question for a second session, RushHour? I’d love to give you a chance to make revisions first (to all your paragraphs) and put the post back into Feedback Please so we can concentrate on content.
Sounds good to me! Once I finish my revisions, I will put back into feedback please for your attention.