 |
| South Western Collectibles Grading Service |
|
| South Western Collectibles Grading Service |
|
| Currency for Sale |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
VIEW OUR CURRENT INVENTORY BY => CLICKING HERE <=
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
| CURRENCY, in economics, term designating all the circulating media of exchange of a country. In this sense, currency includes coins and paper money. The term sometimes includes credit instruments. Coins are generally designated as metallic currency, and paper money and credit instruments as paper currency. Further distinctions are made in the latter classification: Government notes are called government currency; bank notes are designated as bank currency; and checks drawn on bank deposits are called deposit currency. This use of the term currency is of comparatively recent origin, dating from the period following World War I. Earlier uses of the term were more restricted. In countries in which the governments did not issue paper money, the term paper currency was applied exclusively to bank notes. In the U.S. and a number of other countries, on the contrary, the application of the term currency was limited to government-issued, legal-tender paper money. The change from the earlier, restricted meanings of the term to its modern significance resulted in part from the great increase, following World War I, in the use of credit instruments. The volume of currency needed to transact the business of a country is determined, basically, by the volume of commodities and services in circulation. Ordinarily, the larger the volume of commodities and services, the greater the volume of currency needed to circulate them. During periods of increasing production, the volume of currency tends to rise; during recessions it may fall. Currency Management. Problems of currency management have occupied a prominent place in the economic history of the U.S. At the time the national government was established in 1789, the amount of metallic money in circulation was insufficient to meet the needs of the new nation and comprised varying denominations and values of British, Spanish, French, and Portuguese coins; the paper currency previously established by the Continental Congress had become worthless and had ceased to circulate; and the paper money issued by the states had become depreciated. Early efforts to establish a sound metallic and paper currency led to the inception of the First United States Bank (1791); a national currency (1792), including the present decimal system of coinage; and a mint (1794). State-chartered banks, however, continued to issue paper money, and a positive solution of the problem of currency management was impossible in the absence of a national banking system and uniform banking practices in the states. This lesson was made emphatically clear to statesmen and economists by the conditions that resulted from the refusal of Congress, in 1833, to renew the charter of the Second United States Bank, successor to the First United States Bank. During the following three decades, sometimes referred to as the dark decades of American banking, abuses of sound banking practices multiplied and assumed scandalous proportions, and speculators and counterfeiters flourished. A basis for resolving the problem of a sound currency was achieved when the American Civil War induced the federal government to raise large sums of money through the issuance of bonds. The National Currency Act of 1863, later amended and renamed the National Banking Act, was enacted by Congress to establish a national banking system and a uniform national currency. Later experience revealed that this system was not sufficiently elastic in providing adequate amounts of currency during periods of prosperity and in contracting the volume of currency in slack times. Federal Reserve System. Efforts to remedy the defects of the national banking system led to the establishment of the FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM, (q.v.) under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The Federal Reserve, which controls the volume of money and credit in the U.S., was planned as an equivalent in some respects of the central banks of other countries. All U.S. currency is now issued by the Federal Reserve banks; bank notes, previously issued by the national banks, were retired in 1935. As of Dec. 31, 1974, private citizens have been allowed to own gold but not to use it as currency. | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
Over 25 Years of |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
Home | About Us | Items for Sale | Grading Services | Links |
Another
eWebNation Creation
Copyright 2004 - 2005
Want to see photos of US Coins? 
