We are privileged that the dollar is the "currency of last resort" and the most important currency in the world. Global commodities are priced in dollars. Central banks in other countries hold great quantities of dollars. The dollar was the safe harbor, the port in the storm during the credit crisis.

After Hurricane Katrina, I wanted to go back to New Orleans to help musicians return to the city. But Andrew Young advised me, "If you want to help people, go work at an investment bank." His contrarian advice opened my eyes to the importance of capital. "Learn how to make some money before you give it away." I learned that you can bring about good in the world especially if you have a paycheck.

On a biological level, the brain registers money as something valuable - even a dollar bill which has no intrinsic value, it's just paper.

I don't think money can be understood through a lens limited to economics. And most books about money tell you the history of money, the instrument. But money is also an idea, one that we exchange to survive.

Social standing and reptuation has always mattered, but now it 's happening on a global basis.

Look at Google. They are re-organizing their businesses ,even renaming it with Alphabet, so they can be bolder and make strategic mistakes and then learn from them. But most companies aren't Google in that they make incremental changes and don't go for the moon shot.

Money is becoming increasingly plastic and digital. If there is a major disaster, let's say an asteroid strike, we'll go back to trading meats and furs. We won't need an abstraction, a dollar bill, but real tangible goods to survive.