Wizard Wealth (was Weasleys being poor)

[sashibuya at hotmail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 11250

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., A B <old_wych at y...> wrote:
> 
> --- Jim Ferer <jferer at y...> wrote:
> > 
> > Wealth: Wealth -- gold, for a wizard -- has to be
> > the same as we 
> > understand it.  If any competent wizard could
> > conjure it, gold 
> > wouldn't be all that valuable anymore.  The same
> > goes for things like 
> > clothes or material items: if they were that easy to
> > get, what use 
> > would money be?
> > 
> Isn't it interesting that wizards use actual gold, and
> not pieces of paper that used to represent gold, but
> nowadays represents a given "value"? How might this
> fit into the scheme of things?
> 

Well, perhaps they aren't using real gold (as real gold, that is 24k 
gold, would be very soft and the galleons not deforming everytime 
people drop them), but some sort of interesting alloy. To indulge in 
pointless speculation, it is interesting that they don't have paper 
currency, which took awhile to catch on in the West. Their banking 
system seems founded on just putting the money in the vaults and 
leaving it, which is not what has happened in a real bank for ages.  
(Did Harry get interest on his parents' money?)To have paper money, 
you need a stable government and real faith in the cash; there seems 
no reason why wizards should be unable to produce uncounterfeitable 
money.... I recall reading somewhere that the paper money partially 
evolved out of bank notes. If Gringotts is too conservative to do 
such things, that could explain it. 

Charmian (another rather silly post :))