This book shows that the use of money transforms a market economy into a payment society where production and employment are subordinated to the logic of asset markets. Monetary policy emerged out of private banking business and was always exposed to the risk of losing credibility and reputation. The stability of key currency systems was based on different policy preferences. A simple game-theoretic macro model explains the working and the downfall of the gold standard, Bretton Woods and the European Monetary System. It is shown that waning willingness to accept foreign leadership in monetary policy affairs propelled the creation of the euro.

This book deals with the evolution of monetary systems. Firstly, it argues that money forms a constitutional element in any private-ownership economy, estab lishing a nominal-standard order for the market behaviour of individual agents. The market economy is basically a payment society where money structures and values economic activities, and performs itself as a market asset. The use of re sources and the production of commodities are governed by calculations in mone tary values which subordinate production and employment to the logic of asset markets. The "veil" of money cannot be withdrawn, as a matter of fact and in theoretical analysis, without changing the economic order of society. Money originates from a credit relation between market agents, thus spot payments re place intertemporal exchange. Problems of low trust and information in mutual economic relations are projected onto the money medium in a monetary economy, thereby enhancing its efficiency and dynamics. The rate of interest is not related to time; it is the price for maintaining the agents' solvency in the current period, and it determines a positive rate of return on capital and production. Secondly, the book shows that network externalities in the use of money led to monopoly solutions in the national and hegemonic leader-follower relations in the international economy."

Das vorliegende Buch bietet eine Einfuhrung in die makrookonomische Theorie und Politik und behandelt folgende Themenbereiche:
- Die Bestimmung von Produktion und Beschaftigung durch Vermogensdispositionen, Einkommensverwendung und Aktionen der Geld- und Fiskalpolitik,
- Ursachen, Konsequenzen und Bekampfungsmoglichkeiten der Inflation,
- mikrookonomische Funktionsprobleme des Arbeitsmarktes und makrookonomische Steuerungsmoglichkeiten des Beschaftigungsniveaus,
- die durch Aussenwirtschaftsbeziehungen begrundeten Einflusse auf die inlandische Wirtschaftsentwicklung und den Handlungsspielraum der nationalen Wirtschaftspolitik,
- Probleme der Wahl und Funktionsweise wirtschaftspolitischer Strategien."