From CumEx to Bitcoin: Wolfgang Walter Breaks It Down

Who controls the money system as money itself becomes increasingly invisible? This question drives TheColu.mn writer Wolfgang Walter in his new essay-and-column collection “Wem gehört unser Geld?” (Amazon affiliate link) into the fourth volume of his “Kölner Sudelbücher,” where he casts a critical eye on the economic and political present. It spans financial crises, banks and shadow banks, cash and cryptocurrencies, as well as wealth and inheritances.
Walter blends macroeconomic analysis with historical memory, journalistic research, and literary irony. He writes about banks that distrust their own system, about CumEx and billions in losses, about gold reserves and Bitcoin. Wealthy individuals and retirees also feature, as does a politics that too often turns economic problems into linguistic games.
It is not about criticizing individual actors, but about the architecture of a system in which money becomes increasingly code and economic decisions turn into social power, the author says. “Wem gehört unser Geld?” is not a macroeconomic textbook but a political and social status report: pointed, skeptical, sometimes angry—and always with the conviction that behind every number are people.
Wolfgang Walter, born in 1957, grew up in the Ruhr area and worked in Berlin as a journalist and newspaper editor, later in Cologne as a production manager and television editor. Today he writes as an author and essayist on political ethics, societal developments, memory culture, and the digital public sphere. Walter has lived in Cologne since 1994 and is married to Joachim Walter, an art and learning therapist.