Money is a social contract that affects the decisions of nations and individuals. Our financial institutions drive our political systems and the growth of nations. And money and banking are indispensable in both your daily financial transactions and your most essential long-term plans. A working knowledge of money and banking systems is critically useful in several ways:

• It helps you understand the complex and often bewildering world of finance.
• It helps you to “read” the current economic climate, to make sense of what you see in the media, and to gauge where the economy is headed.
• It gives you key insights into society and the economic issues in life.
• It allows you to comprehend integral aspects of history and the way civilization developed.
• Perhaps most important, it helps you to plan your own life and to make key financial decisions for yourself and your family.

Speaking to all of this in Money and Banking: What Everyone Should Know, economist and award-winning Professor Michael K. Salemi of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill leads you in a panoramic exploration of our monetary and financial systems, their inner workings, and their crucial role and presence in your world. In 36 incisive and detailed lectures, he gives you a penetrating look at the financial institutions that are fundamental to your life and well-being. Beginning with the colorful history of money, including the monetary history of the United States, you investigate pivotal topics, including

• the crucial role of public confidence in the stability of our financial system;
• how money is created by commercial and central banks;
• how “Wall Street” and “Main Street” are inextricably intertwined, each requiring the success of the other;
• the dramatic history and causes of hyperinflation;
• the uses of “local” currencies and nontraditional monetary systems;
• the thorny problem of financial firms that are deemed “too big to fail,” and why being named “TBTF” gives firms an incentive to engage in risky investments;
• the irrational psychology of stock market “bubbles,” in which investing becomes speculative gambling; and
• why the value of the dollar depends on interest rates elsewhere in the world.

Dr. Salemi reveals all of this and more as a great and rousing human story, with remarkable details of how financial systems came into being, the problems they’re designed to solve, and how they’ve evolved and changed. While those with knowledge of economics will find rich depth in these lectures, the course is also a welcoming entry for those with no background in finance.