LITMUS

Preamble

Why does finance exist in the first place?

Published9 min

Kit opens with a more fundamental question than balance sheets, bonds, stocks, diversification or valuation: why does finance exist at all? After several trips down the rabbit hole of "OK, but why?", he keeps coming back to four ideas: people make choices, people seek better outcomes, resources are scarce, and the future is uncertain.

From agency and aspiration, through barter, money, interest and banks, the Preamble puts the chain together and arrives at the first great principle of finance: a dollar today is generally worth more than a dollar in the future. The number that connects those two dollars is the interest rate.