money: The Monetary System of the United States

The monetary system of the United States was based on bimetallism during most of the 19th cent. A full gold standard was in effect from 1900 to 1933, providing for free coinage of gold and full convertibility of currency into gold coin; the volume of money in circulation was closely related to the gold supply. The passage of the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, which put the country on a modified gold standard, presaged the end of the gold-based monetary system in domestic exchange. Under this system, the dollar was legally defined as having a certain, fixed value in gold. While gold was still thought to be important for maintenance of confidence in the dollar, its connection with the actual use of money was at best vague. The 1934 act stipulated that gold could not be used as a medium of domestic exchange. Subsequently, a number of measures de-emphasized the dollar's dependence on gold, and since the early 1970s, practically all U.S. currency, paper or coin, has been essentially fiat money.

Under the Legal Tender Act of 1933, all American coin and paper money in circulation is legal tender, i.e., under the law it must be accepted at face value by creditors in payment of any debt, public or private. Most of the currency circulating in the United States consists of Federal Reserve notes, which are issued in denominations ranging from $1 to $100 by the Federal Reserve System, are guaranteed by the U.S. government, and are secured by government securities and eligible commercial paper. A small fraction of the currency supply is made up of the various types of coin, none of which has a commodity value equal to its face value. Finally, an even smaller part of the circulating currency is composed of bills that are no longer issued, such as silver certificates, which were redeemable in silver until 1967, and bills in denominations between $500 and $100,000, which have not been issued since 1969. Starting in 1996, the Federal Reserve undertook the redesign of all paper bills, chiefly to deter a new wave of counterfeiting that uses computer technology; further changes, including colors in addition to green, were introduced in 2003. Today, however, currency and coin are less widely used as a means of payment than checks, debit cards, credit cards, and computer and smartphone electronic-payment apps; demand deposits (checking accounts) are, therefore, generally considered part of the money supply. Certain assets, sometimes called near-monies, are similar to money in that they can usually be readily converted into cash without loss; they include, for example, time deposits and very short-term obligations of the federal government. Funds that are frequently transferred from country to country for maximum advantage are called hot monies. The technical definition of the nation's aggregate money supply includes three measures of money: M-1, the sum of all currency and demand deposits held by consumers and businesses; M-2 is M-1 plus all savings accounts, time deposits (e.g., certificates of deposit), and smaller money-market accounts; M-3 is M-2 plus large-denomination time deposits held by corporations and financial institutions and money-market funds held by financial institutions. See also banking; on the regulation of the supply, availability, and cost of money, see Federal Reserve System and interest.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Electronic Money
• The Monetary System of the United States
• Evolution
• Bibliography

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