Talk:Fiat money

The definition at [1] (http://xrefer.com/entry.jsp?xrefid=445276&secid=.-) sounds a little different...

yes, but the word "ficuciary' carries a lot of weight. These definitions at xrefer are strictly from neoclassical theory, they are not balanced for the Marxist or green view, which requires more investigation of the assumptions... for instance the term ficuciary. That said, it doesn't hurt to wrok off the neoclassicl definitions, since they're exact. That said, this article has a problem, which is that "fiat money" is really a loaded term. We should talk about backing and clearing, not about "types of money" if we want to be general. See political economy for a list of the issues - the neoclassical phrases are chosen to be useful in game theory etc.... not what the other branches care about. --24 (signature appended by Magnus Manske)

I think it would be best if the article here would start with something like the "neoclassical theory" definition, then have the Marxist/green view (labeled as such!).

that's exactly what I just did to political economy which drastically improved it...

When I read the beginning of the current article, I instantly get the impression "this is something bad!".

has style problems - serios ones...

And that's something that, IMHO, should never happen in an encyclopedia article! It should say "fiat money is..." without assigning any value, subtle or not.

unfortunately, this is the single most contentious topic in economics. I have literally heard hundreds of hours of crap from people about what fiat money is and isn't. Basically, even saying it exists is assigning a value. Neutrality is near impossible.

Then, it can say "it is considered by... to be...", open and clearly labeled as an opinion. IMHO, the topics you choose to write about are not in question, and neither is most of the contents, but the way it is presented. I am sure we can work on the form. --Magnus Manske, Tuesday, April 9, 2002

thanks. Yes, in general, the rewrites have been improvements, and they tend to come when someone says 'what's this crap?' and gets attitude about it, finds the missing material, and then it all gets worked in together. Others in need of a form rewrite might be moral purchasing, intellectual capital, human capital, commodity markets, green economists, anti-globalization movement. These are the rest of the most contentious topics in economics...

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The last paragraph says something like 'Between the end of World War II, ...' - that doesn't make sense, there should be two times for a 'between' statement. I had a quick look at the US dollar article to see if I could fill in the gap, but it's not clear to me what the period in question actually is. Can someone else fix it please? - S

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The article leaves an impression that the gold standard was a kind of widespread historical standard without qualification other than that the silver standard was an alternative. In fact, the gold standard only became widespread quite recently, due to widespread western wealth. When societies were poor, the standard was whatever people could afford. Thus the usage of lesser metals like silver (the British pound was original a pound weight of sterling silver, thus Pound Sterling) or copper (Roman sestercii), or even non-metals.

Will someone correct it, or should I?