What Is A Dollar Worth? 1-22-09 In this rapidly deteriorating economy the question is constantly asked: What is "it" worth? The standard unit of measure to facilitate the exchange of goods in the civilized world for the last several hundredyears has been what we call "money". In our case it is the US Dollar. With so many economic forces at work including wild currency swings the dollar is becoming an increasingly unreliable unit of measure even in the exchange of basic goods. This is not the first time "money" became an unreliable instrument of trade. Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations addresses this issue. He states that the value of goods is directly related to the labor which it cost to produce those goods. In the 1700s and before it was thought that corn had a fairly even supply and demand ratio (I'm thinking it still does today), making it a more reliable unit of monetary measure than the local currency over a long period of time. If a castle was sold on "lease-hold" (similar to a modern mortgage) it often took a hundred years or more to pay the debt off. The parties concerned knew that changes in the value of currency would be great over that length of time and it was very possible that the same currency would not even be in use through the term of the lease-hold. The most reliable system that was devised in those times was to tie the amount of the payment to the current price of a bushel of corn. For example; if the payment was charged at a rate of 10 bushels of corn per month the current market price of a bushel of corn would be checked (today corn closed at $387.50 per bushel). Based on that your current montly payment for the castle is $3,875.00. Next month it may be more or less but it will always be based on 10 bushels of corn. I thought this was an interesting way to temper the fluctuations of an unstable currency. --Larry Trefz