Just the idea of making money can increase your skin conductancy, meaning there's a current of excitement.

In some cultures, when you give someone a gift, it's expected that they will pass it on. This seems like a peculiar practice in the West, but in many other societies, a gift has a spirit. If you try to possess the gift, you remove its spirit as a gift.

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

In essence, money gives us the calories we need to survive. Over time, we became aware that exchange and cooperation increase our chances for survival. Eventually we create tools to facilitate trade. One of these tools is called money.

Reputation will become an even more important currency in the future.

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.

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