Maintaining a credible form of money is central to the organisation of society. Money can take many forms and can be an actual precious metal, and hence a commodity, or a paper version that may or may not be linked to the value of a commodity and increasingly just an electronic chit. In this chapter I shall discuss the development of money, the fascination with gold and the reasons why we still need money to perform its roles in providing operational units of account, means of exchange and a store of value. What we shall see is that sorting out money is one of the most important things any government, dictator or, even builder of a nation state ought to fix. In this sense money might be thought to be the ultimate public good that provides critical social capital and enables the exchange of ideas, goods and transfers of resources.2