I. History of Money
　　一、貨幣歷史

　　Money’s got a very colourful history, because a number of things have been used in the place of what we use as money. Feathers, shells, cloth salt in Roman times when the Roman soldiers were paid in salt and that’s how we get the word salary, from the Latin sal for salt.　　歷史上的貨幣五花八門。古時候，羽毛、貝殼、布料甚至鹽都曾是交換工具。古羅馬士兵得到的軍餉就是鹽。鹽這個詞也是英文工資這個詞的起源。拉丁文Sal的意思是鹽，英文中工資Salary就是從它演變而來的。

　　And a number of tribes used cattle, which were useful because they were transportable. But they were quite bulky and you weren’t always sure of the size of cattle you were going to get, so there was a problem there of quality.　　還有一些部落以牲畜作為交換媒介。這很有用，因為牲畜可以運來運去。但是它們體積龐大，而且無法確切知道你將要得到的牲畜的大小，因此存在質量方面的問題。

　　In the ninth century in China we had paper money for the first time. It wasn’t quite the paper money that we know, it was more like a piece of paper saying a promise to pay.　　九世紀時在中國首次出現了紙幣。這種紙幣與我們現在使用的不同，更象是一種欠條。

　　And then in the seventh century we had money in the form of precious metal. There was always a problem of making sure that the coin that you got had enough precious metal in it to give it a value. When things got tough, you often found some civilisations were quite good at what they called sweating the money, which was effectively taking out the precious metal content so that what you got actually wasn’t what you thought you got.　　另外在七世紀時出現了貴重金屬貨幣。但如何確切知道貨幣中有足夠的貴重金屬含量以使它具有相應的價值則一直是個問題。當時局艱難時，一些文明古國會從這種貨幣中提取貴重金屬成份，使得貨幣已不再擁有你原來以為它擁有的價值。

　　And we have a form of that here in Australia when we had the holey dollar when we had a coin with a hole in the middle because there was a shortage of metal.
　　澳大利亞就曾有過一種這類的貨幣，一種中間有個洞的貨幣。這是由于當時缺乏鑄幣金屬的緣故。

　　And in those days, Spanish coins were used a lot. Sometimes stores used certain tokens because there was a shortage of actual coinage. And then there is money as we know it today in notes and coins – plastic notes.
　　那時候西班牙硬幣廣為流通。有時商店里因為沒有足夠的硬幣而使用一些代用幣。后來就有了我們現在使用的紙鈔、硬幣，還有塑料鈔票。

　　And of course, if we were doing this program in a hundred years time we might talk about quaint little things called money, notes and coins, because all we’d be using would be plastic card.
　　當然，如果我們在一百年之后再來制作這一節目，我們可能就會談論一些奇特有趣的叫做錢、紙幣或是硬幣的小東西，因為到那時我們大概只使用塑料卡了。

　　Notes：

　　1.precious metal 貴重金屬
　　2.sweating the money 從貨幣里提取貴重金屬成分
　　 3.holey dollar 有洞的錢幣，這是十九世紀在澳大利亞新南威爾士州流通的貨幣，因為缺乏金屬材料而將錢幣穿洞
　　4.token 輔幣，具有象征性的貨幣，代表的價值高于本身的價值
　　5.plastic note 塑料鈔票
　　6.plastic card （塑料）信用卡，也叫credit card

II、ThreeEssentialFunctionsOfMoney

　　We look at the functions of money. Firstly it’s a medium of exchange, so it’s some commodity which facilitates the exchange of goods and services.
　　首先貨幣是一種交換媒介，是幫助其他貨物與服務進行交換的手段。

　　It is also a unit of account, which means that we use money to reckon prices and reckon values for comparisons between goods and services or over time.
　　其次它是一種計算單位，就是說我們用錢來測量貨物、服務或時間之間的價格和價值的比較。

　　And thirdly, money is a store of value. It is an asset. It’s something that we can use to store value away to be retrieved at a later point in time. So we can not consume today, we can hold money instead – and transfer that consumption power to some point in the future.
　　第三它是價值存儲手段，是一種資產。我們可以用它把價值儲存起來，在以后的某個時刻再取回。這樣我們不必現在就把它用掉，而是可以存著錢，把這種消費能力轉移到將來的某個時刻。

　　In the earliest days, for example in ancient Babylon, measures of wheat were the money commodity. People would exchange other goods and services firstly by exchanging quantities of wheat. And eventually it was worked out by the Babylonian priests that they could hold the wheat in a central store and then simply keep records of who owned the wheat. And rather than physically moving the wheat around, eventually we had a primitive system – quite advanced by the terms of the day – of record keeping. We had ledgers.
　　古時候，比如在古巴比倫，小麥被當作實物貨幣使用。人們在交換其它貨物和服務之前先要交換一定數量的小麥。后來巴比倫的祭司們發現，他們可以把小麥保存在一個中心倉庫中，然后只需要記錄下誰擁有這些小麥就可以了。這樣就用不著把小麥搬來搬去了，于是我們就有了在當時條件下很先進的原始簿記制度，也就是分戶賬。

　　Notes：
　　1.Medium of exchange 交換媒介
　　2.Unit of account 計算單位
　　3.Store of value 價值儲存手段
　　4 money commodity 商品貨幣，實物貨幣
　　5 primitive system of record keeping 原始簿記制度
　　6 ledger 分戶賬 轉

III.Forms Of Money
　　三、貨幣形式

　　Fiat money has not only no particular value in use, it doesn’t even really have a value in exchange except that which is decreed that it would have.

　　名義貨幣不僅僅沒有什么特別的價值，而且在商品的交換中它本身根本沒有價值。它擁有的只是法律所賦予它的價值。

　　So fiat money is money which is intrinsically worthless. And its value exists by virtue of the fact that it is generally acceptable. And fiat money, needless to say, is one of the most mysterious inventions of the human mind, and no economist has managed to explain exactly why it is that people will generally accept something as valuable when it clearly has no value other than that which it is decreed to have.
　　
　　因此，名義貨幣從它的本質來說實際上一錢不值。它的價值只在于它能夠獲得普遍的接受。毫無疑問，名義貨幣是人類最神奇的發明之一。任何經濟學家都還無法確切解釋，為什么人們能夠把一種除了法定的價值外顯然沒有任何價值的東西作為寶貴的東西來普遍接受。

　　A credit instrument is an obligation. And it’s used as money because it has value. And the value that it has, of course, is a value which is based upon its credit-worthiness, in other words, how much credit or how much credence people give to the promise which is actually written down. What I’m receiving or using as an instrument for money purposes is somebody else’s obligation. Their preparedness to do something for me which might be to give me fiat money. That could be the promise which is incorporated in the cheque or the bill of exchange.

　　信用手段是一種契約。它可以被當作貨幣使用是因為它也有價值。當然，它的價值是建立在它的信用聲譽之上的。換句話說，也就是要看人們能夠給予這些寫成文字的保證多大程度的信任。我作為貨幣收取的票據文件是對方的一種債務契約，是保證他們準備為我做一些事，比如要支付給我法定貨幣。這種保證可能會以支票或匯票的方式來體現。

　　Notes：

　　1.fiat money 名義貨幣，法定貨幣

　　2.credit money 信用貨幣

　　3.credit instrument 信用手段，信用安排

　　4.credit – worthiness 信貸價值，信用聲譽

　　5.簡單概括來說，名義貨幣實際上是把貨幣形態象征化，也就是貨幣的實體與額面價值分離，貨幣代表的價值大于貨幣本身材料的價值。
　　這也就是為什么每當出現了金融動蕩的時候，人們就會紛紛把手里的鈔票兌換成老式的、本身擁有價值的貨幣，比如金銀等貴重金屬。

　　6.名義貨幣，也叫法定貨幣，英文是 Fiat money.

　　7.現代社會中還有另外一種形態的貨幣，叫做 Credit money，信用貨幣。隨著商品流通的發達，貨幣與商品交易有了時間的間隔，出現了所謂的延期交易，因而也就有了債權債務契約，也就是買賣當事人之間或借貸雙方的信用關系。盡管信用貨幣這一形態早已在人類歷史上出現，但只是在不久以前它才得到廣泛的使用。
　　信用貨幣也就是信用手段－ credit instrument，或者說是一種當事人雙方或多方都接受的信用安排。它包括用以取得信貸的文件、合同或支票、期票、借據等等。