Money talks

“The greatest legacy one can pass on to one's children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one's life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.”
--Billy Graham

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- WE learned an eye-popping lesson in the recent midterm elections that money really talked--and had “spoken” heavily.
Many competent and really deserving aspirants for a public office fell by the wayside or were badly clobbered by second-rate and amateurish rivals who brandished cash left and right like they won as grand champions in a multi-million cock derby.
Some of these lousy but moneyed candidates also got more attention from the press, while their more deserving rivals had to forage for recognition in order to be given a gargantuan space in the media.
Most of these good-for-nothing candidates also were recipients of fantabulous praises from paid media advertisements, newspaper columns, and blocktime radio programs.
Their poor rivals got nothing except being mentioned only in the news, yes, for being candidates in the elections. No mention of how good or great they are in certain fields, or how effective they would be if elected.

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Qualifications had no match against the full force of money.
Doctorate degrees were waylaid by inferior and unremarkable reputations.

Even ex-convicts, ruffians, rapists, grafters, magicians, circus players awash with cash steamrolled those with outstanding and distinctive reputations in community but didn’t have enough moolah to match their rivals’ ferocious expenditures.
The power of money and how to make the impossible become possible; how to turn black into white vice versa; how to make people turn deaf, mute, and blind, is awesome.
No one should underestimate the capacity of money to turn a normal situation upside down; to buy loyalties; to create and propagate a bundle of lies; as payoff to mercinaries and hooligans; to sponsor a mayhem; as a bribe; to harass; to kill; and, yes, to buy votes.

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We made a great deal of research on when did money start making the world go round.
In 101 Things You Need To Know…And Some You Don’t Know, Richard Horne and Tracy Turner give an explanation:
“Say you had twelve goats and needed a sack of grain and a pair of shoes. Before money was invented, you might offer one of your goats to a local farmer in exchange for the grain, and another goat to a cobbler in return for shoes. Hang on! A whole goat seems a lot for a pair of shoes. Oh, and the cobbler doesn’t need any goats. The farmer’s up for the deal if you can give him a cow. So you then have to find someone with a spare cow who wants goats? And how many coats make a camel!?”
Using money is a lot less complicated than this tricky bartering system, they explain.
No one knows who exactly came up with the idea, but they reportedly lived in China.
--It’s thought that cowry shells were used as the first ever money in China around 1200 BC. The first metal money appeared there 200 years later.
--Native American Indians also used shells as money. This is first recorded in the 16th century, but they were probably used long before that.
--The first coins were made out of silver. Unlike today’s coins, which are symbols of value, these silver coins were valuable in themselves because they were made from a precious metal.
--To avoid carting around heavy coins, the Chinese introduced paper money and used it from about the 9th to the 15th century (when they stopped the practice because of high inflation). Elsewhere in the world paper money wasn’t used for centuries.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)