Instruments
A contract regarding any combination of capital assets is called a financial instrument, and may serve as a
- medium of exchange,
- standard of deferred payment,
- unit of account, or
- store of value.
Most indigenous forms of money (wampum, shells, tally sticks and such) and the modern fiat money is only a "symbolic" storage of value and not a real storage of value like commodity money.
Read more about this topic: Financial Capital
Famous quotes containing the word instruments:
“We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–84)
“But when to mischiefmortals bend their will,
How soon they find fit instruments of ill!”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“Water, earth, air, fire, and the other parts of this structure of mine are no more instruments of your life than instruments of your death. Why do you fear your last day? It contributes no more to your death than each of the others. The last step does not cause the fatigue, but reveals it. All days travel toward death, the last one reaches it.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)