Through human history, wealth has been measured in grain, gold, and, now, dollars. Though counterfeiting of coins and notes goes back a long way, it is only with electronic financial accounting in a global economy tainted by toxic loans and imaginary funds that there is an urgency to search for a realistic objective way to monitor and regulate what we are doing to our Earth and ourselves. Various schemes using analysis of utility functions, oil equivalents, entropy, energy, and other units have been tried and, while helping to understand some basic processes and flows, have always been swamped by the machinations of financiers and the attention big sums of money attract. Now, the concept of exergy, pioneered in Eastern Europe in the 1950s, is being researched, developed, and applied, especially in China, driven by the desperation to measure the reality beyond the twin specters of global financial and environmental crises. A rough inventory of the matter in the biosphere at the coordinate details of an angstrom and an appreciation of how humans harness and manipulate electromagnetic forces can be enlightening as to what is and is not sustainable. Without that understanding, any financial estimate and proposed stimulus packages or IMF reform will be wildly wrong and may even be headed in the wrong direction.