The result of many years of work between economists, historians, anthropologists and psychoanalysts, this book shows how money is the cement of societies--the most archaic as well as the most contemporary. Money reigns not only over horizontal relationships between individuals, but also over the vertical relationships between individuals and the State. This analysis entirely changes our conception of money, and makes us better understand the outpouring of emotion at the passage of the Euro, which opened questions of national sovereignty and of the legitimacy of new financial institutions. Michel Aglietta is an economics professor at Nanterre, and member of the Prime Minister's Council on Economic Analysis. André; Orléan is the Research Director at the CNRS.