Coined The rich life of money and how its history has shaped us

Kabir Sehgal

Sound recording - 2015

Money. We obsess about it in a material sense, but we don't know much about it on a deeper level. We know it makes the world go 'round, but do we really understand how? It's what we want, but why? Coined is a colorful take on the history of money and its meaning in our lives. Kabir Sehgal's voice and vision are unique products of his sophisticated grasp of the subject--he is both a keen observer of and a high-stakes player in the global economic continuum. Sehgal is an approachable, authoritative guide to an unprecedented interdisciplinary safari, in which readers will learn how money and our intrinsic compulsion to value and exchange is fundamental to our survival. Exploring topics like the ancient Vedic notion of debt,... monkeys who understand fruit juice as currency, the neuroscience of gambling, money in art, and many more ideas, Coined mixes stories from the front lines of global currency exchange with extensive, thoughtful research. With often surprising and thought-provoking anecdotes and research, Coined presents an entertaining, multidimensional portrait of currency through the ages.

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COMPACT DISC/332.49/Sehgal
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Subjects
Published
[Ashland, Oregon] : New York, NY : Blackstone Audio, Inc [2015]
Language
English
Main Author
Kabir Sehgal (author)
Other Authors
Muhammad Yunus, 1940- (author of introduction etc), Kevin Stillwell (narrator)
Edition
Unabridged
Item Description
Title from container.
Physical Description
9 audio discs (approximately 11 hours) : digital, CD audio ; 4 3/4 in
ISBN
9781478959328
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

"NOTHING HAD AN EFFECT on people like money," recalled a Stanford neuroscientist who once experimented with scanning people's brain activity while they played high-stakes financial games. "Not naked bodies, not corpses. It got people riled up. Like food provides motivation for dogs, money provides it for people." When it comes to money, we are basically animals. This is something we may know in our hearts, but it's still shocking to see it made manifest in real life, as Kabir Sehgal did while working at J.P. Morgan in 2008. When the market crashed, revealing the supposedly complex system to be little more than a series of rusty pulleys and weights, it "exploded my perception of money," Sehgal writes. "I was alarmed with the damage wrought by the financial crisis, and I had difficulty grasping how it could have happened in the first place. I rode the No. 6 train and saw grown men crying while they carried cardboard boxes of office supplies. I remember watching on television the misery in the eyes of Americans who had lost their homes." The shock of the experience prompted Sehgal to embark on a quest to "understand money," its origins, history and why it makes us behave the way we do. This is an ambitious endeavor, one that crosses into multiple disciplines and has been taken on by greater scholars than a J.P. Morgan vice president (Sehgal was promoted after the crisis). John Maynard Keynes even had a name for this particular brand of intellectual treasure hunting - "Babylonian madness" - coined after he became "absorbed to the point of frenzy" trying to pin down the origins of currency in Asia. (And researching monetary history was his full-time gig!) But Sehgal is ambitious: In addition to his day job, he has collaborated on a children's book, written a book about jazz and produced a Grammy-winning Latin jazz album. Still, even for a man with such a diverse skill set, this has proved to be a lot to take on. In the introduction to "Coined," Sehgal sets expectations low: "Every chapter is meant to spark your curiosity," he writes, "not satisfy it." The book is ultimately a survey of the "life of money," combining academic research about its origins and development with personal anecdotes from Sehgal's travels, divided into three parts: "Mind," "Body" and "Soul." If you've been waiting for an economic version of "Eat, Pray, Love," this may be it. But instead of wisecracking yogis, Sehgal eats ceviche with biologists in the Galápagos, who show him how micro-organisms form symbiotic relationships to survive. He consults Adam Smith to understand how we evolved from a bartering society into one that uses currency, and traces the ways in which the powerful have wielded money to the reign of Kublai Khan. There's a Bill and Ted-like quality to all the borrowed wisdom: Here's Plato, warning that these new coin things would stoke "deceitful habits in a man's soul," and sounding spookily prescient about the need for market regulation! Here's Benjamin Franklin, encouraging the spread of Plentiful Currency in his Crazy Capital Letters! Oh, and here's Jesus, who had a lot to say about money, most of it negative, although televangelists who promote "prosperity gospel" have found their way around that. Sehgal makes it hard to forget that he is an investment banker, not only because in the chapter on debt the techniques of modern J.P. Morgan Chase debt collectors go conspicuously unexamined. On the very first page he calls an Indonesian cabdriver "bro," and later, in Kolkata, his suggestion that the wheelchair-bound, tumor-ridden inhabitants of Mother Teresa's Home for the Dying Destitute - with whom he cannot communicate - are "at peace" feels presumptuous. And it must have been the banker in Sehgal who set expectations low, because it was a shrewd bet. The scope of information he's distilled is remarkable, and it may just be the multiplicity of beer-drinking scenes that help the drier hunks go down smoothly. He's not unaware of his privilege, and his thoughtfulness comes as a pleasant surprise, particularly in the latter half of the book, where he introduces a gang of numismatists - coin collectors - whose hobby in the social food chain probably ranks somewhere below gold bugs and just above Civil War reenactors. Sehgal is respectful, even affectionate toward these oddballs. He understands, and perhaps identifies with their mission - to understand history, and human beings, by looking closely at their money. And you can't argue with his conclusion: "Money is like blood," he writes. "You need it to live, but it isn't the point of life." Cool story, bro. An investment banker on a quest to understand why money makes us behave the way we do. JESSICA PRESSLER is a contributing editor at New York magazine.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 22, 2015]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Investment banker Sehgal (Walk in My Shoes) undertakes a broad survey of topics connected (sometimes loosely) to money in its various functions as a medium of exchange, store of value, token of obligation, and even cultural artifact. Sehgal begins by reviewing fundamental biological exchanges such as the operation of mitochondria and the "evolution of cooperation," before turning to the psychology of financial decision making and the "anthropology of debt," the latter exemplified by elaborate Japanese conventions of gifts and social obligations. He examines competing historical views of money as "hard" or "soft" and their respective limitations and dangers, including the seductive, stimulative "alchemy" of expanding the money supply with soft money-which, unlike the hard variety, is not backed by an intrinsically valuable asset. He then looks at the future of money from alternately bearish and bullish points of view. Finally, Sehgal touches on money's ethical aspects, and its artistic function in expressing national identity and aspirations. Sprinkled with light anecdotes and illustrations from the author's global travels for his banking day job, the book, Sehgal concedes, "does not advance a grand theory." Indeed, it would have been strengthened by greater integration of its disparate elements. Nevertheless, Sehgal may encourage the general reader to join him in thinking "about an ancient topic in new ways." Agent: Gillian MacKenzie, Gillian MacKenzie Agency. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Sehgal worked for Lehman Brothers and had a front-row seat when it failed. Now a vice president with J.P. Morgan, the author has a self-professed obsession to understand money. This book was written not to be a definitive work but to spark the reader's curiosity about the subject. Divided into three sections, it covers the mind (why-biology, psychology, and anthropology), the body (what-hard, soft, and future), and the soul (how-values and creativity) of money. From the history of currency as a storage of surplus value to the future of it as digital legal tender, Sehgal investigates it all with best- and worst-case scenarios. Using a bit of a scattergun approach, he takes the reader from the Galapagos Islands, the vaults under New York City, and excavations in Bangladesh as he shows that money is a symbol of what man values. While the study of money can be a never-ending pursuit, the author acknowledges that just as humankind has shaped and created money, so money has shaped and created civilization. VERDICT While not an exhaustive discussion of money's history and future, Sehgal's book is a worthwhile treatment for the curious.-Bonnie A. Tollefson, Rogue Valley Manor Lib., Medford, OR (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Sehgal (Jazzocracy: Jazz, Democracy, and the Creation of a New American Mythology, 2008, etc.), a vice president for emerging market equities at J.P Morgan, opens up the toolbox of his trade in this wide-ranging discussion of money and its instrumental function through human history.The author offers a traditional definition of money as "a medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value," which he attributes to the 19th-century British economist William Stanley Jevons. However, there's nothing traditional about Sehgal's elaboration. Beginning with biology, anthropology and psychology in the form of modern neuroscience, the author compares money as currency, or flow, to the energy flows in biological and botanical processes (photosynthesis and cellular respiration). "Money may be an evolutionary substitute for energy," writes the author. His unconventional approach turns more practical when he discusses the moral, ethical and cultural values associated with money and its uses in the world's major religions and ethical system. He cites the Sermon on the Mount"blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"and the laws of Moses (greed is a sin). In between, Sehgal reviews the history of money, from commodity trade to paper forms, to develop broader implications of money as an instrument symbolizing human thought and activity. He worries that "[m]oney is becoming more electronic and invisible. It has become so abstract that we risk forgetting the concrete lessons of history. As long as money remains a symbol of value, some will seek to control it." The author traces a conflict between two views of money: one which argues that money has, or should have, an intrinsic value derived from nature, the other which asserts that money is a political creation, as President Richard Nixon did in 1971 when he unpegged the dollar from gold. A lively account with an unconventional viewpoint. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.