(From the review in the NYT) “There is a gigantic gap between them and us — people who understand these forces and this language, and the rest of us,” Mr. Lanchester said. So, back around the time of the 2008 crisis, he embarked on a self-taught immersion course in the language and mechanics of money. “The first obstacle, and the main obstacle, was the words themselves,” he said. “It’s embarrassing to admit if you literally don’t know what a word means.” So he began to ask and ask, and ask again. He shares his findings in “How to Speak Money: What the Money People Say — And What It Really Means,” out this week from W. W. Norton & Company. In it, he explains some of the barriers to understanding, lays out the case for financial literacy and then provides an essential glossary of terms for those who would like to achieve this happy state. Here we find easy-ish concepts (amortization) harder ones (credit default swap, high-frequency trading) and ones we know are super-important in some complicated but confusing way (Libor: the London Interbank Offered Rate). And yes, also included are those pesky terms fiscal and monetary. For the record: “ ‘Fiscal’ means to do with tax and spending, and it is controlled by the government; ‘monetary’ means to do with interest rates, and it is controlled by the central bank,” he writes.
Posted on: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 07:37:46 +0000
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