me connected with a system that controlled it:
Paper money, it is said, originated with the goldsmiths of Europe
who held the private gold hoards deposited by wealthy citizens
for safekeeping. The goldsmith issued a receipt for the gold
deposit, and over time, it became clear that the receipt itself
could be used in commerce since whoever owned that piece of paper
could go to the goldsmith and claim the gold. Modern banking
originated in the goldsmiths' discovery that they could safely
write more receipts and lend them to people, exceeding the total
gold that was on hand, so long as they always kept a responsible
minimum in reserve to honor withdrawals (Greider, 1987, p. 227).
Although gold remained a standard of value from the classical period, the rationalization of a monetary system that would be consistent with international trade and wealth based on money occurred at about the same time as the Renaissance, which in turn occurred at about the same time that new worlds were being discovered, the discoveries themselves the result of exploration for superior trade routes, empires of various European kings, and city state or national mercantile advantages. As Wells puts it, "That large treatment of money and credit which we call finance, which had gone out of European political life with the collapse of the Roman Empire, was now coming back to power" (Wells, 1971, p. 664). In this regard, Burke (1967, pp. 96 7) cites the emergence during the twelfth century of localized trade fairs in what were to become Europe's market towns. To these towns producers, farmers, and traders brought their goods and left with the traded goods of others. Commercialization emerged because of increased reliance on money, rather than lots of goods, as the measure of trading value. The Italian "commenda, a piece of paper that first made international trade possible....