АҚШ долларының тарихы және эволюциясы

none

The history of the United States dollar began with moves by the Founding Fathers of the United States of America to establish a national currency based on the Spanish silver dollar, which had been in use in the North American colonies of the Kingdom of Great Britain for over 100 years prior to the United States Declaration of Independence. The new Congress's Coinage Act of 1792 established the United States dollar as the country's standard unit of money, creating the United States Mint tasked with producing and circulating coinage. Initially defined under a bimetallic standard in terms of a fixed quantity of silver or gold, it formally adopted the gold standard in 1900, and finally eliminated all links to gold in 1971. Since the founding of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 as the central bank of the United States, the dollar has been primarily issued in the form of Federal Reserve Notes. The United States dollar is now the world's primary reserve currency held by governments worldwide for use in international trade.

The United States Mint commenced production of the United States dollar in 1792 as a local version of the popular Spanish dollar or piece of eight produced in Spanish America and widely circulated throughout the Americas from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Made with similar silver content to its counterparts minted in Mexico and Peru, the Spanish, U. S. and Mexican silver dollars all circulated side by side in the United States, and the Spanish dollar and Mexican peso remained legal tender until the Coinage Act of 1857.

After the American Revolutionary War began in 1775, the Continental Congress began issuing paper money known as Continental currency, or Continentals. Continental currency was denominated in dollars from $1/6 to , including many odd denominations in between. During the Revolution, Congress issued in Continental currency. In the 1790s, after the ratification of the United States Constitution, Continentals could be exchanged for treasury bonds at 1% of face value. Congress appointed Robert Morris to be Superintendent of Finance of the United States following the collapse of the Continental currency. In 1782, Morris advocated the creation of the first financial institution chartered by the United States. The Bank of North America was funded in part by bullion coin, loaned to the United States by France. Morris helped finance the final stages of the war by issuing promissory notes in his name, backed by his own money. The Bank of North America also issued notes convertible into gold or silver. Runaway inflation and the collapse of the Continental currency prompted delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 to include the gold and silver clause in the United States Constitution, preventing individual States from issuing their own bills of credit. Article One states they were prohibited to "make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts." Some people use this clause to argue that federal paper money is unconstitutional, though very few constitutional scholars hold that position.

On July 6, 1785, the Continental Congress of the United States authorized the issuance of a new currency, the US dollar. The word dollar is derived from Low Saxon cognate of the High German Thaler; the term had already been in common usage since the colonial period when it referred to eight real coin (Spanish dollar) or the "Spanish milled dollar" issued by the Spanish from New Spain and used throughout the rest of the Americas. The Spanish dollar was the most commonly circulated and readily available currency used by common Americans and was valued for its high silver content. Subsequently, the American administration of President George Washington turned its attention to monetary issues again in the early 1790s, under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury at the time. Congress acted on Hamilton's recommendations, with the Coinage Act of 1792 that established the dollar as the basic unit of account for the United States. The United States Mint was created by Congress following the passing of the Coinage Act. It was primarily tasked with producing and circulating coinage. The first Mint building was in Philadelphia, then the capital of the United States. The Mint was originally placed within the Department of State, until the Coinage Act of 1873 when it became part of the Department of the Treasury (in 1981 it was placed under the auspices of the Treasurer of the United States). The Mint had the authority to convert any precious metals into standard coinage for anyone's account with no seigniorage charge beyond refining costs.

In the early 19th century, the intrinsic value of gold coins rose relative to their nominal equivalent in silver coins, resulting in the removal from commerce of nearly all gold coins, and their subsequent private melting. Therefore, in the Coinage Act of 1834, the 15:1 ratio of silver to gold was changed to a 16:1 ratio by reducing the weight of the nation's gold coinage. This created a new U. S. dollar that was backed by 1.50 grams (23.22 grains) of gold. However, the previous dollar had been represented by 1.60 g (24.75 grains) of gold. The result of this revaluation, which was the first devaluation of the U. S. dollar, was that the value in gold of the dollar was reduced by 6%. Moreover, for a time, both gold and silver coins were useful in commerce. In 1853, the weights of U. S. silver coins (except the dollar itself, which was rarely used) were reduced. This had the effect of placing the nation effectively (although not officially) on the gold standard. The retained weight in the dollar coin was a nod to bimetallism, although it had the effect of further driving the silver dollar coin from commerce. Foreign coins, including the Spanish dollar, were also widely used as legal tender, until 1857. With the enactment of the National Banking Act of 1863during the American Civil Warand its later versions that taxed states' bonds and currency out of existence, the dollar became the sole currency of the United States and remains so today. During the 19th century the dollar was less accepted around the world than the British pound. Nellie Bly carried Bank of England notes on her 1889–1890 trip around the world in 72 days; she also brought some dollars, Bly wrote, "to use at different ports as a test to see if American money was known outside of America". Traveling east from New York, she did not see American money until she found $20 gold pieces used as jewelry in Colombo; there Bly found that as currency dollars were accepted at a 60% discount. In 1878, the Bland–Allison Act was enacted to provide for freer coinage of silver. This act required the government to purchase between $2 million and $4 million worth of silver bullion each month at market prices and to coin it into silver dollars. This was, in effect, a subsidy for politically influential silver producers. The discovery of large silver deposits in the Western United States in the late 19th century created a political controversy. Due to the large influx of silver, the intrinsic value of the silver in the nation's coinage dropped precipitously. On one side were agrarian interests such as the Greenback Party that wanted to retain the bimetallic standard in order to inflate the dollar, which would allow farmers to more easily repay their debts. On the other side were Eastern banking and commercial interests, who advocated sound money and a switch to the gold standard. This issue split the Democratic Party in 1896. It led to the famous Cross of Gold speech given by William Jennings Bryan, and may have inspired many of the themes in The Wizard of Oz. Despite the controversy, the status of silver was slowly diminished through a series of legislative changes from 1873 to 1900, when a gold standard was formally adopted. The gold standard survived, with several modifications, until 1971.

Gold certificates were another form of representative paper money issued by the United States Treasury from 1865 to 1933 and redeemable in gold. While the United States observed a gold standard, the certificates were a convenient way to pay in gold.

Paper currency was issued by poorly capitalized state chartered "wildcat" banks in the United States during the Free Banking Era from 1836 to 1865.

Demand Notes are a type of United States paper money issued from August 1861 to April 1862 during the American Civil War in denominations of 5, 10, and 20 They were the first issue of paper money by the United States that achieved wide circulation.

National Bank Notes were United States currency banknotes issued by National Banks chartered by the United States Government between 1863 and 1935. The notes were usually backed by United States bonds the bank deposited with the United States Treasury. While the notes were not legal tender in general, they were satisfactory for nearly all payments to and by the federal government.

A United States Note, also known as a Legal Tender Note, was a type of paper money that was issued from 1862 to 1971 in the U. S. Having been current for over 100 years, they were issued for longer than any other form of U. S. paper money. They were known popularly as "greenbacks" in their day, a name inherited from the Demand Notes that they replaced in 1862. While issuance of United States Notes ended in January 1971, existing United States Notes are still valid currency in the United States today, though rarely seen in circulation. Both United States Notes and Federal Reserve Notes are parts of the national currency of the United States, and both have been legal tender since the gold recall of 1933. Both have been used in circulation as money in the same way. However, the issuing authority for them came from different statutes. United States Notes were created as fiat currency, in that the government has never categorically guaranteed to redeem them for precious metal even though at times, such as after the specie resumption of 1879, federal officials were authorized to do so if requested. The difference between a United States Note and a Federal Reserve Note is that a United States Note represented a "bill of credit" and was inserted by the Treasury directly into circulation free of interest. Federal Reserve Notes are backed by debt purchased by the Federal Reserve, and thus generate seigniorage for the Federal Reserve System, which serves as a lending intermediary between the Treasury and the public.

Congress continued to issue paper money after the Civil War, the most important of which was the Federal Reserve Note that was authorized by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Since the discontinuation of all other types of notes (Gold Certificates in 1933, Silver Certificates in 1963, and United States Notes in 1971), US dollar notes have since been issued exclusively as Federal Reserve Notes.

World War II devastated European and Asian economies while leaving the United States' economy relatively unharmed. As European governments exhausted their gold reserves and borrowed to pay the United States for war material, the United States accumulated large gold reserves. This combination gave the United States significant political and economic power following the war. The Bretton Woods agreement codified this economic dominance of the dollar after the war. In 1944, Allied nations sought to create an international monetary order that sustained the global economy and prevented the economic malaise that followed the First World War. The Bretton Woods agreement laid the foundations for an international monetary order that created rules and expectations for the international economic system. It created the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the predecessor of the World Bank, and an international monetary system based on fixed exchange rates. It valued the dollar at $35 per ounce of gold and the remaining signatories pegged their respective currency relative to the dollar, leading some economists to argue that Bretton Woods "dethroned" gold as the default asset. While Bretton Woods institutionalized the dollar's importance following the war, Europe and Asia faced dollar shortages. The international community needed dollars to finance imports from the United States to rebuild what was lost in the war. In 1948 Congress passed the European Recovery Program generally known as the Marshall Plan – giving dollars to European countries to purchase imports needed to rebuild their economies. The plan helped European countries by providing them dollars to purchase the imports needed to produce exports, eventually allowing the countries to export enough of their own goods to obtain the dollars necessary to sustain their economies without reliance on any Marshall like plan. At the same time, Joseph Dodge worked with Japanese officials and Congress to pass the Dodge Plan in 1949, which worked similarly to the Marshall Plan, but for Japan rather than Europe. Consequently, some proponents of the intrinsic theory of value believe that the near zero marginal cost of production of the current fiat dollar detracts from its attractiveness as a medium of exchange and store of value because a fiat currency without a marginal cost of production is easier to debase via overproduction and the subsequent inflation of the money supply. In 1963, the words "PAYABLE TO THE BEARER ON DEMAND" were removed from all newly issued Federal Reserve notes. Then, in 1968, redemption of pre 1963 Federal Reserve notes for gold or silver officially ended. The Coinage Act of 1965 removed all silver from quarters and dimes, which were 90% silver prior to the act. However, there was a provision in the act allowing some coins to contain a 40% silver consistency, such as the Kennedy Half Dollar. Later, even this provision was removed, with the last circulating silver content halves minted in 1969. All coins previously minted in silver for general circulation are now clad. During 1982, the composition of the cent was changed from copper to zinc with a thin copper coating. The content of the nickel has not changed since 1866 (except for 1942 1945 when silver and other metals were used to preserve nickel for war uses). Silver and gold coins are produced by the U. S. government, but only as non circulating commemorative pieces or in sets for collectors. All circulating notes, issued from 1861 to present, will be honored by the government at face value as legal tender. This means that the federal government will accept old notes as payments for debts owed to the federal government (taxes and fees), or exchange old notes for new ones, but will not redeem notes for gold or silver, even if the note states that it may be thus redeemed. The only exception to this rule is the $10,000 gold certificate of Series 1900, a number of which were inadvertently released to the public because of a fire in 1935. This set is not considered to be "in circulation" and, in fact, is stolen property. However, the government canceled these banknotes and removed them from official records. Their value, relevant only to collectors, is approximately one thousand US dollars. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, there is $1.2 trillion in total US currency in worldwide circulation as of July 2013.