This book examines the principle of functioning of money. It shows the reasons for the constant fluctuation of one of the most important equivalents of our lives and explains why money not only “moves the world” (money makes the world go found), but again and again causes destructive crises. It shows how the colossal debts of third world countries, unemployment and pollution, the production of weapons and the construction of nuclear power plants are linked to the mechanism that ensures the circulation of money: interest and compound interest. Interest on loans is, in the words of American economic historian John L. King, the “invisible engine of destruction” in the so-called free market economy.