Government also borrows bread and wine from the exchange economy, providing interest-bearing bonds that will be redeemed out of future taxation. A gallon is a measure of liquid volume, whether a gallon of milk or of gasoline. A yard is a measure of length, whether of land or of fabric. A dollar is a measure of government debt, which permits it to also become a measure of private debt. The exchange economy is most often disrupted by government errors.
Private producers can contribute to distress in the market, by failing to live up to contracts.
But because there are myriad producers, none can have an appreciable effect on the economy if they fail by their own incompetence. There is only one central government, though, which means that a government error can cause distress in the ability of producers to produce and exchange through financial intermediaries. In 1977, I discovered the true cause of the Crash, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which the market learned in the last week of October 1929 would almost certainly become law. The exchange of goods no longer made financial sense, which meant the value of the assets underpinning the producers had to fall in value. In the classical model, producers need a constant and reliable unit of account by which to measure the value of bread and wine, domestic and foreign, in a common reference point.