If you'd like to get a sense of how the economy works, see if you can get your hands on a MONIAC (or more likely a software emulation of one) - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC_Computer . It's a water powered analogue computer that was built in 1949 to get an understanding of money flows in a national economy. However you should also check Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel "Making Money" in which it was discovered that as these analogue computers get increasingly accurate they start to directly effect the reality that they are modeling. Horrible and perilous feedback loops result...
Robert
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