The strange thing about money is the way it has changed, over time from being valuable commodities (such as gold and silver) to becoming pieces of paper with promises to pay the gold or silver to pieces of paper that are "legal tender for all debts public and private" to pieces of paper that promise to give you the other pieces of paper (i.e. cheques) to electronic entities that tell you how much numbers of these pieces of paper you have.

We have given up our real money for fiat money and we have given up our fiat money for promises to pay fiat money. What a wacky world we live in.

---

A common misconception is that paper currency is money. Currency is a form of money but it is, by far, not the predominant form of money today. In today's world, money is created by bankers at the stroke of a pen by issuing debt. Similarly, money is destroyed when a loan is repaid or, worse, when loans are defaulted on.

I personally believe that more than 90% of the adult population does not truly understand the true nature of money. It's sad, really.

Interesting Facts about U.S. Currency

• The Bureau of Engraving and Printing produces 37 million notes a day with a face value of approximately $696 million.
  
  
• 95% of the notes printed each year are used to replace notes already in circulation. 45% of the notes printed are $1 notes.
  
  
• The U.S. Department of the Treasury first issued paper currency of the United States in 1862 as a result of a shortage of coins and the need to finance the Civil War.
  
  
• During the Civil War period, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was called upon to print paper notes in denominations of 3 cents, 5 cents, 10 cents, 25 cents, and 50 cents. The reason for this is that people hoarded coins because of their intrinsic value which created a drastic shortage of circulating coins.
  
  
• In 1929, the size of currency was reduced to about 2/3's of its former size when production was converted to 12-subject plates. The familiar portraits and back designs of our currency were also established at that time.
  
  
• A stack of currency one mile high would contain over 14½ million notes.
  
  
• The approximate weight of a currency note is .032 troy ounces (12 ounces to a pound.) There are 490 notes in a pound.
  
  
• If you had 10 billion $1 notes and spent one every second of every day, it would require 317 years for you to go broke.
  
  
• Currency paper is composed of 25% linen and 75% cotton. Red and blue synthetic fibers of various lengths are distributed evenly throughout the paper. Prior to World War I the fibers were made of silk.
  
  
• Between the Fort Worth, Texas and the Washington, DC Facilities approximately 18 tons of ink per day are used.
  
• By the end of calendar year 1999 there will be a total of 24 currency presses divided equally between the Fort Worth and Washington Facilities.
• Have you ever wondered how many times you could fold a piece of currency before it would tear? About 4,000 double folds (first forward and then backwards) are required before a note will tear.
  
  
• The following information regarding the average life of a Federal Reserve Note was provided by the Federal Reserve System - please note that the life of a note depends on its denomination:
  
  
  
  • $ 1 ...............18 months
  • $ 5 ............... 2 Years
  • $ 10 .............. 3 Years
  • $ 20 .............. 4 Years
  • $ 50 .............. 9 Years
  • $100 .............. 9 Years
  
  
  
• Our present sized currency measures 2.61 inches wide by 6.14 inches long, and the thickness is .0043 inches. If each currency note printed was laid end to end, they would stretch around the earth's equator approximately 24 times. Larger sized notes in circulation before 1929 measured 3.125 inches by 7.4218 inches.
  
  
• The 100 dollar note has been the largest denomination of currency in circulation since 1969.
  
  
• The obverse and reverse of the Great Seal of the United States appeared in a currency design for the first time when the $1 Silver Certificate Series 1935, was issued. The Seal dates back to 1782 -- before the Constitution.
  
  
• The legend, "In God We Trust," became a part of the design of United States currency in 1957 and has appeared on all currency since 1963.
  
  
• The largest note ever printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was the $100,000 Gold Certificate, Series 1934. These notes were printed from December 18, 1934 through January 9, 1935 and were issued by the Treasurer of the United States to Federal Reserve Banks only against an equal amount of gold bullion held by the Treasury. These notes were used for transactions between FRBs and were not circulated among the general public.
  
  
• The origin of the "$" sign has been variously accounted for, however, the most widely accepted explanation is that the symbol is the result of evolution, independently in different places, of the Mexican or Spanish "P's" for pesos, or piastres, or pieces of eight. The theory, derived from a study of old manuscripts, is that the "S" gradually came to be written over the "P," developing a close equivalent of the "$" mark. It was widely used before the adoption of the United States dollar in 1785.
  
  
• Contrary to popular belief, the automobile pictured on the back of the $10 note is not a Model "T" Ford. It is merely a creation of the designer of the bill.
  
  
• The hands of the clock in the steeple of Independence Hall on the reverse of the $100 Federal Reserve Note are set at approximately 4:10.
  
  
• Martha Washington is the only woman whose portrait has appeared on a U.S. currency note. It appeared on the face of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1886 and 1891, and the back of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1896.
  
  
• The beginning of an establishment for the engraving and printing of U.S. currency can be traced as far back as August 29, 1862, to a single room in the basement of the Main Treasury Building where two men and four women separated and sealed by hand $1 and $2 U.S. notes which had been printed by private bank note companies. Today there are approximately 2,800 employees who work out of two buildings in Washington, D.C. and a facility in Fort Worth, Texas.
  
  
• During Fiscal Year 1999, it cost approximately 4.2 cents per note to produce 11.3 billion U.S. paper currency notes.

information from the Bureau of Printing and Engraving

Alcoholic beverage my sister came up with, while watching the movie Swingers. It is, in fact, pretty damn money.

ingredients:
1 oz cranberry vodka
3 oz Wink (it's now called CPlus Wink I do believe - it's similar to Fresca)
serve over ice; garnish with lime

A nice, tart drink.
Cheers!

Track 7 on Choking Victim's album No Gods / No Managers (Hellcat, 1999). The lyrics in the liner notes are accompanied by an illustration bearing a rather blunt message: American bills of varying denominations formed into the shape of a swastika, with a couple of crosses superimposed. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Anyway, the artwork in the CD is attributed to Eric Drooker.)

This song also contains part of a lecture by Michael Parenti, who is a well-known political analyst and author of several books on American and global socio-political structure. (At the time of this writing he lacks a node; can someone more well-read than myself help us out?)

Lyrics:

Spoken by Michael Parenti:
"The function of that police action, those interventions in Central America and the Middle East, the function is system sustaining. It is to maintain that overall system! And you don't look at the particular cost. I could demonstrate to you that every single bank robbery, that in every single case practically, the cost of the police was more than the actual money that the robbers took from the bank. Does that mean, 'Oh, you see, there's really no economic interest involved, then. They're not protecting the banks. The police are just doing this because they're on a power trip, or they're macho, or they're control freaks, that's why they do it.' No, of course it's an economic... of course they're defending the banks. Of course, because if they didn't stop that bank robbery, regardless of the cost, this could jeopardize the entire banking system. You see, there are people who believe that the function of the police is to fight crime. And that's not true; the function of the police is social control and protection of property."

I am sick and tired and my money's always spent
And though their jobs are killing me their money pays my rent
The fuel of world hate, although it's just a seed
But when it grows and flowers, it becomes the world's greed

Chorus:
Money for the rich
Money for the fed
God supplies the money and God supplies the dead
And when yer dead and ready
Exploited be thy name
'Cuz after you have money things are never quite the same

I don't care for money and money's not for me
The money fuelled this empire and our racist history
Although I'm forced to use it, the rules have all been set
But life is not worth living if your soul is in debt

Chorus

Money lies ??? Money hates ??? Money kills ??? Money rapes

---

See my No Gods / No Managers write-up for Choking Victim's opinions on *snort* copyright.

From Economics:
Money and Currency have value because people believe they have value.
Gold, pieces of paper with ink on them, little stamped discs of metal, and silver are all examples of things that have been used as money. People believed they had value, thus they did.

Money is a figment of societies imagination.

---

Useful things to know about USA money:

USA money comes in these numerical values:

Hard coins:

• 1 cent - Called a "penny".


• 5 cents - Called a "nickel".


• 10 cents - Called a "dime".


• 25 cents - Called a "quarter".


• 50 cents - Usually called a "fifty cent piece" or maybe a "half dollar piece". the word coin might be used instead of piece. These are rarely used in common exchange.


• 100 cents - Called a "one dollar coin". Current coins of this value in circulation are the "Susan B. Anthony dollar" and the "Sacajawea dollar". One dollar coins are rarely used in common exchange, but are not as rarely used as the fifty cent piece.
• There are probably higher value coins in existence that were produced by the Federal Reserve Mints, but they would be mainly specialty coins and most cashiers likely won't accept them.

Paper money:

• 1 dollar bill


• 5 dollar bill


• 10 dollar bill


• 20 dollar bill


• 50 dollar bill


• 100 dollar bill

MALTP says re Money: America used to have bills up to $100,000, but they've stopped printing them up to $100 lately.

1 dollar bill is equivalent to 100 pennies, a 5 dollar bill is equivalent to 5 1 dollar bills, a ten dollar bill is equivalent to ten one dollar bills, etc.

Americans don't say the word bill and we tack on an s so that a 100 dollar bill thus becomes 100 dollars. We refer to the dollar unit because it is simpler to think of it being one hundred dollars rather than ten thousand pennies.

Using the decimal system, anything before the . in a dollar amount is in terms of dollars. Anything after the . is in terms of cents. If it goes over 99 cents (.99 dollars), it become one dollar (1.00 dollar). 99 cents plus a penny, equals one dollar.
.99 dollars +.01 dollars = 1.00 dollars.

Money can be counted by basic units as well as sum amounts. Thus, 60.28 dollars becomes, in largest possible denominations: A 50 dollar bill, plus a 10 dollar bill, plus a quarter, plus 3 pennies. The collection of that money is also: sixty dollars and twenty-eight cents. The sum value is that of 6028 pennies. <\p>

I provided this information about coinage values and coin lingo because I have seen foreigners try and use US cash. Not knowing what some of these things are gets in the way of the transaction.

---

.

It is also important to note that in America, the money is dirty. It has travelled through many hands and many cash registers. If someone handles cash, they should wash their hands before handling food. In fact, I think its a law.

If you have ever seen the hands of someone who has been playing a slot machine in a casino for hours on end, you will know what I'm talking about. Their hands look dirty. The coin gunk washes off fairly easily, but it looks pretty bad.<\p>

---

.

I used to work as a cashier in a bagel shop. Whenever I was done with my shift my hands would smell like the coins I've been handling all day long.
Money smells metalic. When I was a kid, I thought this was cool. Now it just makes me feel dirty. <\p>

Money - Martin Amis (Published 1984)

So I decided to subject myself to the compulsive yet disgusting world of another Amis novel, and I wasn’t disappointed. This I’m told,is the most compulsive and disgusting of the lot.

Money follows the life of John Self,who has to be one of the most nauseating characters I’ve ever encountered. Self is a porn addict, sex addict, drink addict, food addict - basically any kind of bad habit. The one thing that unites all these addictions is money. The main event of the novel follows John working on his first movie,meeting plenty of other unsavoury characters like himself. This is most definitely a satire, too disgusting to be real. But as it’s set in the early 80s, it’s not hard to believe there really were people like this,which is probably the most unnerving thing.

Despite all the drama of Self and his producer Goodney trying to deal with the actors in “Good Money” (which somewhat ironically later becomes renamed as “Bad Money”), the most interesting is the voice of John as he narrates the novel. Although he indulges in the lowest of the low, you can’t help but feel some kind of affection for him,or sorrow as he tries to figure out what is making him feel so terrible all the time, frustrated by his lack of knowledge of ‘real’ life. His character never slips into caricature, despite being painfully funny at times, such as his many drunken nights making a fool of himself in brothels.

There’s no real plot as such - it’s the downfall of a man as his life begins to unravel all around him, and all you can do is sit back and watch. John watches as the world to which he had been so lovingly embraced into turns round and bites him where it hurts. The subtitle of the book is “A Suicide Note” - a suicide note to the life of John Self, even though he doesn’t die. Money leaves a sour taste in the mouth,a warning against the terrible things you can do to yourself, if nothing else.

Rating: 9/10

There is a table on Wikipedia about Nigeria's currency; the Naira. It was introduced in 1973, replacing the Nigerian pound. When introduced, N1 bought $1.52. It has depreciated steadily and today you need more than N400 to buy $1.

I do not understand money. However, I think a currency is valuable only so long as it is accepted as a means of exchange and as settlement for debts. That is why the US dollar is valuable. The biggest spender in the world is the US government, it is also the biggest earner. So, since it accepts the dollar, more people are willing to accept it.

There is a vocal opposition to fiat currencies. The criticism that makes the most sense is that of currency debasement. I think the primary function of money, the quality that other qualities build on is that of store of value. So, resisting the abuse of this defining characteristic is something that makes sense to me. However, the advantages of fiat money must outweight its disadvantages, otherwise, it would not be so popular today.

To understand this situation, I have read quite a number of books on money over the past 5 years. Alas, I am no closer to comprehension. The latest is "Gold, the once and future money" by Nathan Lewis. The book is an argument for the superiority of the gold standard. It seemed to me the most consistent argument he had was that it is difficult to manipulate the money supply under a gold standard. His explanation for why this is a good thing is given at the begining of the book in a passage about the function of money as an information medium. The more stable the medium is, the higher quality of the information transmitted. This is a point I agree with. The book falls on the explanation for how a modern gold standard would work. He criticizes fractional reserve banking intermittently but then asserts that any amount of gold can support any amount of economic activity. This means either prices will continuously fall to match the quantity of money available or a vast amount of paper money will be pyramided on the available gold to support economic activity.

For a book that is purportedly about the gold standard, he devotes considerable space to discuss the effect of taxes on economic growth. For an economist, Mr Lewis has a habit of attributing complex effects (such as economic performance) to single causes.

I did not really like the book. Like many economics books, it quotes reams and reams of data with page after page of charts and tables. It gets boring very quickly. The charts dont really do much for me, I hardly look at them. Also, the book did not explain how a gold standard would work. It does not explain why the current system was adopted, since the people who built it must have known about the gold standard and they chose not to use it.

Anyway, I am reading about money because I think our central bank has done a poor job on our currency. Maybe one day I will be in a position to do a better job.

Mon"ey (?), n.; pl. Moneys (#). [OE. moneie, OF. moneie, F. monnaie, fr. L. moneta. See Mint place where coin is made, Mind, and cf. Moidore, Monetary.]

1.

A piece of metal, as gold, silver, copper, etc., coined, or stamped, and issued by the sovereign authority as a medium of exchange in financial transactions between citizens and with government; also, any number of such pieces; coin.

To prevent such abuses, ... it has been found necessary ... to affix a public stamp upon certain quantities of such particular metals, as were in those countries commonly made use of to purchase goods. Hence the origin of coined money, and of those public offices called mints. A. Smith.

2.

Any written or stamped promise, certificate, or order, as a government note, a bank note, a certificate of deposit, etc., which is payable in standard coined money and is lawfully current in lieu of it; in a comprehensive sense, any currency usually and lawfully employed in buying and selling.

⇒ Whatever, among barbarous nations, is used as a medium of effecting exchanges of property, and in the terms of which values are reckoned, as sheep, wampum, copper rings, quills of salt or of gold dust, shovel blades, etc., is, in common language, called their money.

3.

In general, wealth; property; as, he has much money in land, or in stocks; to make, or lose, money.

The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. 1 Tim vi. 10 (Rev. Ver. ).

<-- 4. anything which serves as money, such as a checking account, a credit account, or a letter of credit. -->

Money bill Legislation, a bill for raising revenue. -- Money broker, a broker who deals in different kinds of money; one who buys and sells bills of exchange; -- called also money changer. -- Money cowrie Zool., any one of several species of Cypraea (esp. C. moneta) formerly much used as money by savage tribes. See Cowrie. -- Money of account, a denomination of value used in keeping accounts, for which there may, or may not, be an equivalent coin; e.g., the mill is a money of account in the United States, but not a coin. -- Money order, an order for the payment of money; specifically, a government order for the payment of money, issued at one post office as payable at another; -- called also postal money order<-- (b) a similar order issued by a bank -->. -- Money scrivener, a person who produces the loan of money to others. [Eng.] -- Money spider, Money spinner Zool., a small spider; -- so called as being popularly supposed to indicate that the person upon whom it crawls will be fortunate in money matters. -- Money's worth, a fair or full equivalent for the money which is paid. -- A piece of money, a single coin. -- Ready money, money held ready for payment, or actually paid, at the time of a transaction; cash. -- To make money, to gain or acquire money or property; to make a profit in dealings. <-- Money supply; plastic money -->

 

© Webster 1913.

---

Mon"ey (?), v. t.

To supply with money.

[Obs.]

 

© Webster 1913.