The Monetary System During 1690 Essay

To understand the reason, and perhaps necessity, for the conception of the Currency act of 1764, one must have a grasp of the economic situation in the American colonies prior to 1764. The currency used in the American colonies has always revolved around, specie or the two types of paper currency, legislatively issued legal tender or land bank notes (Finkelstein 39). Foreign specie was far more common than British specie, due to an export prohibition of British specie and an unfavorable balance of trade between the American colonies and Britain that drained whatever British specie

The United States Mint was created by Congress in 1792, tasked with creating and circulating official coinage. The Mint had the authority to convert any precious metals, like gold or silver, into standard coinage for anyone 's account with no charge. President George Washington and Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton asked Congress to pass the Coinage Act of 1792, which established the dollar as the basic unit of money for the United States. The word “dollar” is prounounced from the German word “thaler”, which means “coin”. Because of the lack of silver and gold mines in the United States, currency from other countries was allowed to be used to buy and sell goods and services until 1857, when silver and gold mines started to generate sufficient metal. In 1863, the National Banking Act was signed by President Abraham Lincoln, making the dollar the sole currency of the United States.

In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Karl Marx identifies a dichotomy that is created and bolstered by the capitalist mode of production. In this mode of production, the dichotomy presents itself in a division of labor that forms of two kinds of people: capitalists, the owners of the means of production, and laborers, those who work under the domain of the capitalist. Marx harshly criticizes this mode of production, arguing that it exploits the laborer and estranges him from himself and his fellow man. According to Marx, this large-scale estrangement is achieved through a causal chain of effects that results in multiple types of alienation, each contingent upon the other. First, Marx asserts that under capitalism, the laborer is alienated from his product of labor. Second, because of this alienation from his product, man is also alienated then from the act of production. Third, man, in being alienated both from his product and act of production, is alienated from his species essence, which Marx believes to be the ability to create and build up an objective world. Finally, after this series of alienations, Marx arrives at his grand conclusion that capitalist labor causes man to be alienated from his fellow man. In this paper, I will argue in support of Marx’s chain of alienations, arriving at the conclusion that laborers, under the capitalist mode of production, cannot retain their species essence and thus cannot connect with one another, and exist in a world

Between the time of the American Revolution and the Civil War the U.S. had no national paper currency. Chartered banks and their privately issued notes proliferated. Countless banks issued paper money in a bewildering variety of denominations and designs—more than ten thousand different kinds by 1860. Counterfeiters flourished amid this anarchy, putting vast quantities of bogus bills into circulation. The Continental was America’s currency. In Stephen Mihm’s, A Nation of Counterfeiters, Mihm weaves a historically based tale of how a shady lot of counterfeiters thrived under the American capitalist system, and then explains how the federal government effectively dismantled the archaic monetary system and in turn ended the counterfeit economy it sustained.

Even before the creation of the Federal Reserve, banks were used by the public just as we use them today. Deposits were made into savings accounts. Loans were taken out to mortgage a home or finance a new business. Banknotes were issued and spent when the public borrowed from the banks. Borrowers spent these banknotes just as paper money is spent today. These bank notes were valued as money since they were backed by the promise that they would be exchanged on demand for either gold or silver.

There was pushback from the Federal Government, President Grover Cleveland included, wanted to keep the money supply fixed in gold, held in the hand of the government (Doc D). Monopolization of the wealth supply was pandemic in the United States in the late

The period in America from 1865 to 1900 was known as the Gilded Age. This was a time for big business, industry, new inventions, and urban growth. With these new ideas and concepts came many problems. A few of these issues were political scandals, overpopulation in cities, monopolies, and bad working conditions. In summary, there were good and bad parts of the Gilded Age that helped shape America into what it is now.

After the Civil War and Reconstruction, The Gilded Age, named by Mark Twain, became a period when large corporations and businesses took root as well as a time of innovation and production. With the rich getting richer and the poor being forgotten, the period was filled with corruptions and monopolies. Between the period 1870 to 1900, large businesses ruled over the society and politics through all means which ushered in a backlash from the majority of Americans who were mostly receiving the back end of the deal.

In 1792, American Congress passed the country 's first coinage act. This meant that the United States Mint was officially responsible for creating coins for public use. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were two of the men who contributed research and ideas towards the early versions of the coins. The Treasury Seal that was developed actually remained quite the same even until today. Benjamin Franklin takes on counterfeiting, using his Philadelphia printing firm to produce colonial notes with nature prints—unique raised patterns cast from actual leaves. This process adds an innovative and effective counterfeit deterrent to notes. The first $2 notes are

The penny, also known simply as the one-cent coin, was first made about 230 years ago in 1787. The first penny ever made was 100% copper and it was heavier and larger than the usual penny today. The design itself was suggested by the famous Benjamin Franklin ("A Brief History of the U.S. Cent”). Lately, people have talked about the idea of abolishing the penny, but others disagree. The penny should not be abolished.

In 1811, when the first bank of the United States concluded, many banknotes were distributed, but banks were not keeping enough silver and gold to collect when requested. Large number of notes were handed out with different values and collections all at the same time as a result counterfeiting was easy. Congress handled and funded the second bank of the United States in 1816 which were allowed the state bank to issue money but its amount did not authorize

Another problem plaguing the economy of Britain was that the Americans continued to issue a large amount of paper bills. The British felt the effective way to halt the issuing of the bills was to put in place a Currency Act. They saw the paper money as "greatly depreciating

Money has always been a sought after commodity and this was no different in the 1700s, during the American Revolution. This time period was financially difficult for the Patriots and England, as their economies were interdependent. The colonists needed British goods to sell within their stores, and the British desperately needed customers who were willing to buy their goods. However, this all changed with the war with the arrival of a new rigidity between the colonists and British, which had been brewing long before the actual advent of the war.

The American Revolution was a political change that occurred somewhere around 1765 and 1783 amid which pilgrims in the Thirteen American Colonies dismisses the British government and privileged, toppled the power of Great Britain, and established the United States of America. The Stamp Act was gone by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765. The new duty was forced on all American settlers and obliged them to pay an assessment on every bit of printed paper they utilized. Ship's papers, authoritative archives, licenses, daily papers, different productions, and notwithstanding playing cards were burdened. The cash gathered by the Stamp Act was to be utilized to help pay the expenses of shielding and securing the American wilderness close to

“counterfeiting is one of the oldest crimes in America...nearly two centuries of American history, from the introduction of paper money in the British colonies of North America at the end of the seventeenth century, to the nationalization of the currency by the federal government at the middle of the nineteenth century, experiences with counterfeit money were both frequent and widely shared” (2010).