 This is the first of a sequence of lectures on monetary economies. Monetary economy is one where money is essential for survival. People purchase or rent basic necessities essential for survival from the market. And to purchase these, they need money because monetary economies have dominated the world for a few centuries. We think that all economies are monetary. But in the sense in which I'm using the term, this is a new development. And most pre-modern economies were not monetary economies in the sense that money was not essential to survival. For example, a feudal economy was not a monetary economy even though money was used for non-essential purchases. In the lectures, we will describe the origins and the evolution of monetary economies. And this is very important because conventional mainstream economics textbooks do not do so. And they actually embody many misunderstandings about the nature of money. One of them is that these textbooks are ahistorical, so they cannot describe how money has evolved over time. Still misunderstandings propagated by standard orthodox texts is that money is neutral. That means that money only affects prices and has no effects on the real economy. If this is true, then there is no difference between monetary and non-monetary economies. So one of the essential features of a monetary economy is that money matters a lot both in the short run and in the long run. And this is the goal of this text, which will explain why. The idea that money is neutral blinded economists to the effects of money. And so the global financial crisis, which was basically caused by money running wild in certain ways, was completely blindsided the economists. Introductory subjection, it is worthwhile to outline an evolution of theories about money over the course of the 20th century, which holds that money is neutral, which means that money only affects prices and nothing else. With additional assumptions, this can be used to show that free markets eliminate unemployment. So unemployment is not a problem to worry about. The Great Depression proved that this theory was wrong because there was high unemployment, which persisted for a long time and was not eliminated by the workings of the free market. And that is why Keynes set out in his general theory to explain why this could happen. And one of the axioms of classical economics he rejected was the neutrality of money. Keynes showed that money must be present in sufficient quantities for the needs of business, otherwise unemployment will result. And if there is excess money, then inflation will result. For 30 years following the Second World War, Keynesian policies were successfully applied to create full employment and prosperity all over the western world. The masses eroded the power of the super wealthy, and so they successfully plotted a counter revolution, which came to power with Reagan and Thatcher. By the 1990s, the new classical economists, the monetarists, dominated the academia. The 1990s was called the decade of the Great Moderation. It had low growth, lackluster, but one thing it didn't have was business cycles, no huge ups and downs in business which had been characteristic of capitalism until then. This was considered a great triumph by the monetarists. On this apparent success, monetarists crowed that we have conquered the most important problem of macro, which is preventing recessions. This turned out to be premature. Just a few years later, the global financial crisis occurred followed by the Great Recession. The global financial crisis led to a crisis of faith in mainstream economics. Many major economists published critiques of the dominant theories. Since then, there has been chaos and confusion in the world of theoretical economics. But the major strategy which has been adopted is to basically circle the wagons and double down on error. Instead of trying to create fundamental changes in economics, as Keynes had done earlier, economists have simply continued to espouse the same faulty theories which led to the global financial crisis. Our goal in this textbook is to create a new approach to economics which recognized the central role of money in modern economies. Also, we aim to incorporate insights from the post-Keynesians which build on the original Keynesian tradition. Also, we hope to study economics in a historical context, whereas neoclassical is ahistorical. The critical lessons which come out from this particular section is that the Great Depression led to the creation of Keynesian economics. Later, the reduced power of the wealthy led to the rejection of Keynesian economics. The global financial crisis has led to a great deal of doubt about neoclassical economics. Environmental crisis has led to the development of ecological economics. So the meta lesson from this is that economic theories are generated in response to historical events and they cannot be studied in isolation from these events. To conclude, modern economics was born in England when gold standard was in effect and is tied to that gold standard. Even though money has evolved completely differently from what it was in that era, the theories of money have not changed and they remain tied to ancient monetary systems. In this text, we will develop a theory of how money has evolved and how theories of money have evolved with the evolution of money itself.