As useful as bartering was, it had obvious pitfalls. How many shoes for a loaf of bread? Will a basket of lemons get me a haircut? How do I get change from two goats? And so gold (and silver) became the facilitators of trade. Gold was portable, difficult to mine (and therefore scarce), and did not break or decay. It was precious.

Until the wars of the 20th century, most countries pegged their currencies to the amount of gold they had in their vaults. This, of course, was a finite quantity: the gold standard. But, by 1971 – during the Vietnam War – this standard was officially abandoned. In order to fund conflict, presidents such as Nixon simply printed more paper money.

And it wasn’t long before the presses rolled in less extreme situations, too. Governments, it seems, are always short of money. Especially near election time, when a spending spree on infrastructure projects may be called for. The politicians get re-elected, and the bankers don’t complain either. (The more money that’s printed, the bigger their bonuses.)

The trouble is that the more paper currency you produce the less valuable it becomes. Imagine if you were offered the only Ferrari in town for a million dollars. Tempting? What if there were 500 Ferraris in town? Or 500 000? Suddenly, the Ferrari seems a lot less valuable.

Gold, however, remains scarce. We can’t just print more of it. (In fact, if all the gold ever mined throughout history were put into one square pile, it would measure 20m by 20m by 20m.) Like cash, though, gold is liquid. But unlike cash, it’s real. There’s a parallel with ‘real estate’: gold is ‘real money’.

But, no doubt you’ve noticed most governments’ solution to their current problems. You can almost hear the presses humming.