Books

The daily average foreign exchange transaction volume in 2023, as announced by the Bank of Korea, is $65.9 billion. Excluding spot and forward exchange transactions, most of the transactions are conducted by forces aiming for currency speculation. Funds move at the speed of light, and if 0.1% of $3 billion moves, it results in a profit of $3 million. Due to financial liberalization through globalization, exchange rates are determined not only by the movement of goods and services but also by the flow of capital. International financial transactions precede trade transactions, and money exceeding fifty times the real economy seeks higher returns, searching every corner of the globe. As it becomes harder to find good returns due to overinvestment and overproduction, companies rely on 'technical trading' and 'momentum investing' for very short-term gains rather than investing based on long-term outlooks and intrinsic value. Thus, a financial crisis in a specific country spreads to our exchange rate fluctuations or financial crises. Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on the asymmetry of information and the imperfection of markets. Market imperfections arise from game-theoretic environments caused by gaps in information, leading to interactions between uncertain elements in the understanding of markets and events. Our decisions, based on human knowledge, result in unintended consequences, but the amount of information gained from failure is greater than from success. Based on a philosophical understanding of wealth, we read the codes of the economy, amplifying the bidirectional feedback mechanism of error and recursion.