Cabinet 50: Money

"The lack of money is the root of all evil," quipped Mark Twain in his recasting of the biblical observation about the moral dangers of greed. And the enormous, and ever-widening, economic disparities today--both between the richest and poorest nations, and between the richest and poorest individuals--do in fact highlight the connection between capitalism's systematic promotion of the love of money and the necessary poverty this produces elsewhere. The most pervasive of all our fictions, money resists traditional critique, some have suggested, insofar as knowing how it operates in no way undermines its ability to structure our social relations. Cabinet issue 50, with a special section on "Money," features Rebecca L. Spang on the unusual history of the notion of inflation; Clara Warner on money in the Middle Ages; an interview with Stephen Mihm on counterfeiting in early America; and a portfolio of artist projects reimagining modes of exchange. Elsewhere in the issue: Paul Freedman on the history of official state dinners; Geoff Manaugh on the architecture of Los Angeles bank heists; and Kevin McCann on self-taught linguist Jean-Pierre Brisset and his claim that human beings descended from frogs.