When the Spell Breaks

Money works only as long as everyone believes it will. The moment that belief cracks, the whole structure can fall with terrifying speed — because there was never anything underneath but confidence.

When people fear their savings might vanish, they rush to pull their cash out; but no bank holds everyone's money at once — most of it is lent onward, existing only as numbers — so a bank that is perfectly sound can collapse simply because enough people feared it would. The fear makes itself true. And when faith in a whole currency dies, prices spiral into the absurd: people have carried their wages home in wheelbarrows, watched a loaf of bread cost billions, even burned banknotes for warmth because the paper was worth less than firewood.

Nothing physical changed on those days. Only the belief did. And that was enough.

And if belief is the only foundation — how did we ever come to trust a number this much?