PlainMoney is a calm, plain-language newsletter about inflation, monetary history, hard assets, and preserving wealth in uncertain times.
Start with Edmund Mercer’s free book, Why I Walked Out of My Financial Advisor’s Office.
Latest Editions
On a Saturday night in November 1907, the presidents of New York’s trust companies were summoned to a private library, and the doors were quietly locked behind them. It is the first chapter of the story that ends at the Federal Reserve.
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In 1965 a president promised there would be no profit in keeping silver coins. Two years later the Treasury gave up — and the public had already sorted them.
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A convicted murderer took control of France’s money, debt, taxes and mint — and inside two years the kingdom invented the millionaire and outlawed gold.
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The night a Federal Reserve governor confessed to the worst economic disaster in American history — and the test that came six years later.
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How the Dow stood still for sixteen years and still quietly lost two-thirds of its value.
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Why prices rise, why currencies weaken, and what history says about both.
Lessons from Rome, reserve currencies, paper money, banking panics, and financial crises.
Why hard assets keep reappearing whenever trust in money breaks down.
Clear frameworks for thinking about savings, risk, and long-term purchasing power.
Plain-English explanations of ideas investors are often told but rarely shown.
The Free Book
Why I Walked Out of My Financial Advisor’s Office is a short, plain-language introduction to the ideas behind PlainMoney: monetary history, inflation, conventional investing advice, and the forgotten role of hard assets.
PlainMoney is written in the voice of Edmund Mercer, a financial historian created for readers who want calm, plain-English explanations of money, markets, and monetary history.