Hold a bill in your hand. It is just paper or plastic.
You cannot eat it. You cannot wear it. You cannot live in it.
Your guess
You are alone on an island with a suitcase full of cash. There are no shops and no people. What can the money do for you?
Sources
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), Book IV ch. 1 — the origin of the money-is-not-wealth argument, to replace the Foundation for Economic Education citation on screen 2: https://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html
Bank of England, "Money creation in the modern economy" (2014) — about 97% of broad money is bank deposits, ~3% cash
British Museum, Money gallery — cowrie shells, early Chinese and Mediterranean coinage
Caroline Humphrey, "Barter and Economic Disintegration," Man, 1985 — no pure barter economy has ever been described
David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011) — credit records predate coinage by millennia
Federal Reserve History, 'Nixon Ends Convertibility of U.S. Dollars to Gold' (15 August 1971) — and Executive Order 6102 (April 1933), which is why US citizens could not redeem dollars for gold long before 1971: https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/gold-convertibility-ends
Federal Reserve, H.6 Money Stock Measures (release of 28 July 2026) — the US cash share of M2, needed because the module states the UK's 97/3 split in dollars: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/default.htm
Federal Reserve, Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy (adopted January 2012, reaffirmed effective 27 January 2026) — the 2% PCE inflation target asserted on screen 50: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/FOMC_LongerRunGoals.pdf
Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences — Tomb M5 (Fu Hao), Xiaotun, Anyang, excavated 1976; more than 6,820 cowries recorded in the excavation report 《殷墟妇好墓》 (Yinxu Fuhao mu), Wenwu Press, 1980.
Jiaozi (Northern Song, Sichuan, private notes late 10th century, state issue c. 1023) — the first generally circulating paper money, replacing the module's Tang Dynasty claim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiaozi_(currency) and http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Terms/jiaozi.html
Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money — "Money is not metal. It is trust inscribed."
Oxford English Dictionary — salary, from Latin salarium (sal, salt); the "paid in salt" story is unsupported
Sardis Expedition / British Museum on Lydian electrum coinage c. 650–600 BC — a specific citation for the 'first official coins' claim on screen 24, which the current source list covers only by a general gesture at the Money gallery: https://sardisexpedition.org/en/essays/latw-kroll-coins-of-sardis
Scott M. Fitzpatrick & Stephen McKeon, 'Banking on Stone Money: Ancient Antecedents to Bitcoin,' Economic Anthropology 7(1), 2020 — the modern archaeological treatment of Yap, including its caution that Furness, Keynes and Friedman have been used to misrepresent Yap: https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/sea2.12154
W. H. Furness III, The Island of Stone Money: Uap of the Carolines (Lippincott, 1910) — the sole primary source for the sunken rai stone anecdote on screen 34, which the module currently presents unsourced: https://archive.org/stream/IslandOfStoneMoney
Yang Bin, Cowrie Shells and Cowrie Money: A Global History (Routledge, 2019), ch. 6 'Why not in early China?' — the case that cowries were valuables rather than currency in Shang and Western Zhou China: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/mono/10.4324/9780429489587-6/early-china-bin-yang
Read end to end and corrected: August 9, 2026. Numbers checked: August 9, 2026.