Talk:Money

Currency established in the TV continuity

I have to say that I tend to agree with the IP address user about some of the content in this article. A lot of it is not based on verifiable information from the TV series as far as I can tell. I think it needs to be better sourced or more concentrated in the "In the books" section where the information cannot be sourced to the TV series.--Opark 77 21:11, May 9, 2012 (UTC)

Well if you think its better to re-arrange the headings so its under the "In the Books" section, just so it all seems kosher, I have no objection. But the TV series doesn't exist in isolation, its a book adaptation; the anonymous IP address just gutted the whole thing via deletion (which sort of rankled). Just generally, certain things which haven't been named yet in the series can probably be assumed to exist within the TV universe (i.e. in The Faith of the Seven, they didn't actually name all seven individual gods until season 2). Whatever. Do you feel it would be more appropriate to move the info under a "in the books" heading? --The Dragon Demands 23:01, May 9, 2012 (UTC)

Okay as per your suggestion I've rearranged things to move stuff into "In the Books", and I deleted a few redundant things. How does it look to you?--The Dragon Demands 23:20, May 9, 2012 (UTC)

Gold Dragons were prominently mentioned in Season 1, and Coppers were mentioned in Season 2 so that establishes they exist in the TV series; I don't think they've mentioned Silver Stags yet.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 03:04, December 1, 2012 (UTC)

Capitalization

Is there some particular reason why the names of the coins, here and on other pages, are capitalized?Ch'vyalthan (talk) 08:10, January 16, 2013 (UTC

I have double-checked the books, which do not capitalize them; A Wiki of Ice and Fire does capitalize these terms in its article. I think they should remain capitalized on here, because TV-first fans might not realize that they are specific terms within the fantasy universe. What do the admins think?--The Dragon Demands (talk) 17:17, January 16, 2013 (UTC)

Petyr Baelish's Job

The quote names Lord Baelish as Master of Coin even though he was no longer Master of Coin at the time of the quote, nor is he presently. The Maester of Coin now and at the time of the quote is Tyrion Lannister.  I don't see why it was added again.

Kingdomo (talk) 04:56, September 24, 2013 (UTC)

Read the description I gave when I reverted your first edit. Baelish was the outgoing Master of Coin at the time, given that he said this the same episode they mentioned he was leaving - and he said it as he was leaving his office, handing off his records to Tyrion.

But this is fixating on a minor technicality - it is needlessly complicated to include long explanations in quotes, and it needed to be streamlined. If he said this in episode 4, after we see Tyrion acting as Master of Coin at council, then we'd have to include this detail. But in episode 3 he was "outgoing", so it isn't entirely wrong to omit the "former" from "Master of Coin". And above all, the quote shouldn't include too much complicated detail.

I reverted your edit once, now I have with a full Talk page explanation. Please stop reverting it.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 13:01, September 24, 2013 (UTC)

Economy article

Book spoilers

Book spoilers

This is a good article on economic trends in the Seven Kingdoms: [1]

Major points include:

• The multi-year seasonal cycle in Westeros is comparable to the Medieval Warming/Cooling Periods (which lasted centuries), and the big die off of the 1300's cooling period followed by the Black Death. Basic rule after the Black Death was that with the labor pool drastically reduced, the price of labor went up while demand for food went down (and thus cost of food went down).
  • At the end of a Winter cycle, therefore, commoners would have greater relative purchasing power. As Summer progresses, population increases, so labor becomes cheap and wages go down, while demand for food increases with rising population. If food production is plentiful as Summer progresses, however, it may keep pace with demand (much of this is dependent on relative growth; population outpacing production, etc.)
  • The result is that by late "Autumn" (Book/Season 1), wages will be low, but commodities will be plentiful, so anyone who already has money has proportionately greater purchasing power - a set amount of money can buy relatively more things. If I have 1 Gold Dragon I can buy 1 horse with it, though most peasants make less than 1 Gold Dragon a year.
  • By late Winter/early Spring, wages become higher as the population has shrunk, while the actual number of commodities is scarce. Wages increase to 3 Gold Dragons a year for peasants, but horses have become so scarce that the price of a single horse went up to 4 Gold Dragons.
  • This matches the pattern seen in the books that 90 years ago in the "Tales of Dunk and Egg", (set immediately after Winter ended) a palfrey horse cost about 3.5 Gold Dragons, while during the War of the Five Kings (just before Winter begins), a palfrey horse costs 1 Gold Dragon. The relative purchasing power of commoners didn't necessarily go up or down.
• Financial crises often lead to currency debasement. Westeros uses is not a fiat currency, but based on the inherent value of the metal in a coin, so they can't just "print new money" as Weimar Germany did. Modern governments often try to cause inflation in their country, so their relative debt lowers. If England owes the USA 100 pounds sterling in 2014, it can intentionally cause inflation so the definition of how much a "pound sterling" is will be five times less in 2015. England then pays the USA what is called "100 pounds sterling" in 2015 money but which is really only worth 20 pounds sterling in 2014 money.
  • The problem is that you can't do that with physical coin money the way you can with fiat currency. You can't just declare that the value of a dollar is going down through inflation. You can issue debased coinage which has a lower gold content, but inherently some of the old, more valuable coins will remain in circulation. This leads to a competition between the old and new coins: people tend to hoard the old coins and not spend them, while refusing to accept the new ones as payment, bringing the economy to a standstill.
    • Fun fact: For United States coinage, the metal content in dimes and quarters is actually only worth about one fifth of their face value. Pre-1982 pennies are actually worth twice their face value today because the price of copper went up...which is why starting in 1982 they started watering-down pennies with zinc, so now they're worth only half of their face value. Nickels, however, are worth over 90% of their face value. All of this is abstract of course, given that paper dollar bills have no "inherent" value but are a fiat currency.
  • The article's interesting theory is about how Olenna Tyrell is said to be hoarding "Hands", the old local currency of the Kingdom of the Reach, with the hand-sigil of House Gardener on it. This actually isn't a spoiler because it happened by this point in the books already. Cersei thinks in her POV narration that Olenna keeps a chest full of Hands in her carriage to pass off on tollkeepers she thinks are annoying: Hands are roughly the same size and weight as Gold Dragons but only worth about half as much. The point of the article is that Cersei has no concept of how economics works, and doesn't seem to understand what "inflation" is -- even Tyrion, riding around in King's Landing, notices that food prices are skyrocketing. So the article's theory is that as with many pre-modern nations in debt, the Iron Throne has been debasing its currency in response to the mounting debt crisis, but it's an "unreliable narrator" situation: Cersei doesn't understand that they're devaluing their currency, so her POV chapters aren't going to explain this. At any rate, the article's point is that maybe Lady Olenna has been hoarding Hand-coins because at least she knows how much gold content is actually in these older coins, while the Tyrells are starting to lose faith in the "strength of the Gold Dragon" under Lannister rule, due to the mounting debt problems.
• Lastly, the article theorizes that maybe Littlefinger caused an inflation crisis on purpose as part of a massive currency exchange scheme. Basically, imagine if "1 US dollar = 1 Euro". You borrow 100 US dollars to buy 100 Euros. If the US economy then experiences inflation, the value of the dollar drops compared to the Euro, resulting in a new exchange rate of "10 US dollars = 1 Euro". You then take your 100 Euros and exchange it for 1,000 US dollars...meaning you gained 900 dollars for basically nothing. You pay back your loan of "100 US dollars" even though its worth less than it was before. You now have 900 US dollars (90 dollars under the old value) for doing nothing. The trick is if you know in advance that a country will experience inflation, i.e. if you're the Treasurer and can manipulate this....maybe Littlefinger was pulling such a scheme by investing in foreign banks while intentionally engineering an inflation crisis (even based on the books, though, that's just wild speculation, nothing indicates that).

--The Dragon Demands (talk) 02:49, April 6, 2014 (UTC)