[careersuicide]

Any discussion of interstellar trade deserves a mention of the fantastic Charles Stross book "Neptune's Brood". I went into it expecting more or less a sequel to "Saturn's Children" but what I got was a treatise on monetary policy for economies that span multiple star systems. The concept of slow and fast money and its implications is utterly fascinating and the book is worth reading just for its explorations of the topic (the plot isn't too bad either).

A quick Google search brought me to this post by Krugman[0]:

  I’m reading an advance copy of Charlie Stross’s Neptune’s Brood. (Hey, I have connections!)
  And it is the best thing by far written on the subject to date, partly because it is, as far
  as I know, the only thing written on the subject to date.

0: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/the-theory-of-in...

[uncletaco]

I loved that book. For the curious, the way interstellar trade works is through a simplified bitcoin network transmitted over light beams (because the only assets worth trading are digital). The biggest difference is each node in the network is actually a planet and a transaction between planet A and B is only confirmed when planet C validates the transaction. Planet C is usually decided on a nearest neighbor basis (If I recall correctly).