My study on the Currency Discrepancy a while back got me started thinking about the nature of currency and the very concept of this thing we call wealth. It is a very simple idea: Wealth is not the amount of money that you have.

So what is it

The typical joke in Singapore is that we can simply hop over to Indonesia and become instant millionaires – in rupiah. I personally keep a Zimbabwe $100 trillion dollar note in my pocket as a reminder of the absolute insanity that can beset supposedly rational economies. I am a 100-trillion-aire on paper, but you and I both know that doesn’t count because I can’t use that $100 trillion to buy anything. Wealth is always and everywhere the amount of goods and services you can and would want to purchase. This is why people should be so afraid of inflation – their wealth ...