The Check Is in the Mail

My checkbooks are presently on my desk next to the computer (it’s an L desk) and the latest bills next to them are waiting to be opened. I usually pay them on weekends: most commonly on Sunday. (It’s not an unbending rule: sometimes I go wild and pay them on Tuesday.) Yes, I pay all but a few of them the old-fashioned way, not online.

Checks preceded money, as such. Standard systems of weight for silver and gold (e.g. the 17 gram Babylonian shekel) were devised very early, which facilitated their use as standards of value, but the precious metals themselves came in any shape and size – hence the need to weigh them. Gold rings were commonplace for easy carriage. So, they were money only in a broad sense. The Lydians are credited with minting the first standard precious metal coins in the 8^th century BCE and the Chinese with printing the first fiat folding currency (originally leather, later paper) in the 2^nd century BCE; those are “money” by even the strictest definition. In ancient Sumer thousands of years before any of that, however, individual traders exchanged clay tokens notched to indicate quantities of sheep, grain, chairs, and other valuables. Those are personal checks. In ancient Rome shipping companies doubled as banks and issued checks cashable at ports-of-call so shippers and passengers didn’t have to carry coins. Modern customer checking accounts operated by banks issuing printed checks with serial numbers (to “check” on them) appeared in 18^th century England, as did central clearinghouses for banks. By the 19^th century they were a commonplace means for ordinary folks to settle debts large and small. The largest single check ever written by a private entity, by the way, was $9,000,000,000 from the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd to Morgan Stanley in 2008. The largest personal check was $974,790,317.77, a divorce settlement from oilman Harald Hamm to his ex in 2015.

Abe Lincoln cashed an $800 check the
day before he was shot.

Once again, as indicated above, I still use checks (paper not clay, though in principle a clay check arguably still should be valid) for most financial transactions, including paying recurring monthly bills. Though electric power companies, credit card companies, phone companies, and…well… pretty much every commercial enterprise offers (nags, actually) to take its recurring payments electronically directly from my account “for your convenience,” I resist allowing that whenever possible. Sometimes it isn’t, but all my important bills are paid by paper check. I realize that is showing my age. I have millennial acquaintances with no checkbooks at all; even when they receive a check, they snap a photo of it with an iPhone and deposit it electronically. I still prefer a hands-on approach, which has the added benefit of simplifying accounting. My deductible expenses are all right there in ink in the checkbook register. There is also the secondary benefit of focusing my attention on my expenditures.

The first checking account in my own name was in 1969 at 16. It was useful for depositing checks from a summer job, and I knew I would need an account when leaving for college the following year anyway. (I no longer recall if the bank rep, a local fellow whom I knew personally, asked for any parental signatures; perhaps the regulations required an adult signature to open an account, but while I remember sitting at his desk I don’t remember being accompanied.) Prior to then I operated entirely by cash, which was normal in the day. Teens didn’t carry credit cards back then; a substantial minority of adults didn’t either. A few banks already were experimenting with debit cards and ATMs, but most Americans had never heard of them, much less seen one. No teen had access to one. The bank where my account opened was gobbled up four or five times after 1969, but I still have it in its successor – something about which I hadn’t really thought until this moment.

I did appreciate the handiness of credit cards right away, though I didn’t qualify for a major one until 1975. By then they were all but essential when traveling. Try renting a hotel room without one. I pay them off by check, however, much as that seems to annoy the issuers, judging by their constant wheedles to switch to electronic payments.

Governments – tax authorities in particular – are fond of the shift to electronic payments (cryptocurrencies excepted): not just to them but in general. It is so much easier for them to track income flows that way. Their computers can monitor all our transactions and red flag any anomalies. Given their druthers, most governments would stop printing money altogether in favor of going all-electronic; they don’t lest truly untraceable private currencies pick up the slack. Gold retains its appeal for many for just this under-the-radar characteristic. Cryptocurrencies appeal for the same reason. I actually seriously considered mining or buying some Bitcoins a decade ago, but hesitated because I didn’t really understand the blockchain record-keeping that is the basis of their value. By the time I read enough about it to grasp it, the profits had been made. The first known purchase by Bitcoin was 10,000 Bitcoins for a $25 pizza in 2010, which established a value of US $0.0025 per coin. Today a single Bitcoin trades at $9,102. So, a pizza’s worth of coins acquired in 2010 would be worth $91,020,000 today. I missed out on that one, but at least I didn’t buy gold. Gold’s price has barely budged since 2010; even the measly interest offered by banks over that decade provided a better return.

Well, those bills on the desk won’t be paid in gold, Bitcoin, or electrons. The paper checks will be in the mail. Hey, at least they’re not clay.

John Lee Hooker - I Need Some Money