AtD (which contains everything) & money and alchemy link.....

[Mark Kohut]

3. Money and Magic 
By Hans Christoph Binswanger 
University of Chicago, 1994
A large and startling theory spills out of this offbeat little volume: Modern money systems have deep roots in alchemy, the Renaissance science of turning base metals into gold. For evidence, Hans Christoph Binswanger, a Swiss economist, turns to literature: the second and less well-known part of Goethe's "Faust," published in 1832. Faust, the alchemist, and Mephistopheles, his diabolic helpmeet, again wager Faust's soul, this time on the creation of money, which they intend to use to save the debt-ridden emperor. The adventurers fashion notes from worthless paper and bold promises and then "materialize" their airy currency by buying land. The transmutation of paper into money and then into property stirs within Faust an ecstatic vision of limitless growth. But Binswanger argues that the ecstasy masks a lurking agony: In a world of boundless, alchemical paper, when is enough, enough?