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This is a greenback, a single, a dollar bill. We the people print them. It's said that it is worth about 100 pennies. In my lifetime, I've seen one of these buy as much as 4 gallons of gas and as little as 1/3 of a gallon. That's due to something called inflation, and market forces.

This is a pretty green rock. It's not worth a darned thing, in theory. In reality it's worth more than a dollar, because armed with a big ass, pretty green rock, a person can take a pocket full of dollar bills from somebody… That's called robbery. The only reason that the green paper has more value (in theory) than does the pretty green rock is that we (the people) believe that it does. We accept the valuation of the paper, and accept it as payment for debts owed to us, because we believe that our debtors will also accept and believe in the value of the paper.
A couple of years ago the stock market was rising high, made buoyant by the excitement of the internet, and the DOT.COM revolution. Everything and everybody was working. The old stuff shirts, in the gray suits were angry. They were angry because many common folks were quitting their jobs and becoming millionaires as day traders. The "Suits" were loosing money, because nobody was taking their brokerage advice anymore. They said that the internet bubble will soon burst because the companies involved were not profitable. They wanted to sell blue chip stocks, to blue blooded Americans, rather than see everyone making money. They tried and they tried to "talk" the tech stocks down, and make us believe that the companies they represented were not profitable, because they did not "make" a product. So what? They knew that the blue chip stocks are only profitable, because we (the people) believe that their companies are. The most profitable company in America today is a company that does not "make" any thing, but sells other people's stuff - Wall-Mart.
Finally George Bush won the Republican presidential nomination, and most folks started to pull their money out of the market, knowing that Bush's agenda was designed to put the money back into the hands of the Blue Bloods, and that soon the regular folks would be going broke again. As Bush gained ground, and could see the viability of his winning the election, he begin to nail the coffin shut on the economy, by talking it down, saying that there was a looming recession, and he wanted us to know that it started before he took charge.
Soon the bubble was burst. No one in the land believed in the economy or the tech stocks, and Bush's prophecy came true. All is now right with the world. The blue bloods still have all of their money, plus the money of all of the former stock traders, who are now unemployed, with diminished 401-K's.