Finance

Finance used to be simple, long ago. You had money and goods and could defend them or you couldn't. Eventually money stopped being identical to the limited amounts of precious metals we were able to mine, and took on a life of its own. It moved too quickly for materials to follow. Even an immense depository had no way to keep up. Money abstracted itself, and became capital, tracked in the ledger books of clerks and the spreadsheets of securities analysts. J.P. Morgan may almost have had control, once long ago, but even he had to die eventually. His bank, however, lives on, deathlessly corporate.