There is no money!

  
Money is a myth. A unit of account for buying, selling and paying rent. The idea that "money works" is wishful thinking on the part of people who save, dreaming of an income without work. Money comes into being only through the belief in money. And if belief can move mountains, then it can also create columns of figures in which a few noughts more or less don't make much difference.

At the end of 1995 the Germans had about 1.8 trillion marks invested in savings accounts, current accounts and deposit accounts, that is 1,800 billion marks. At the same time around 253 billion marks were in circulation as cash. That means: the amount of cash amounts to about one-seventh of the amount of money in accounts. And that in turn can only mean that anyone who has 100,000 marks in his savings account really has only 14,000 marks.

But there is no need to panic. The system functions as long as the players stick to the rules. When the Herstatt Bank in Cologne collapsed because of risky transactions in 1974, not only its customers but also the Cologne Savings Bank got nervous.

Some took all their money out of their savings accounts, counted it - and put it back into their accounts. Had they tried, as in the case of Herstatt, to take the money back home with them this would also have meant the end of the Savings Bank. The Herstatt bankruptcy resulted in a new banking law with more stringent regulations for the security of bank deposits. Even today, however, no bank has as much money in its vaults as its customers have deposited in their accounts.

Of all the myths - neighbourly love, the sexual revolution, high-quality German workmanship - the myth of money is probably the most concrete. After all, coins can be counted, stacked up and weighed. But the moment you part with your money, deposit it in an account, it turns into something abstract. You have it, and yet you don't have it. The only thing that helps is a firm belief that the process works in the opposite direction - which it does, provided there aren't too many people who want to find this out for themselves at the same time.