Us dollar

The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official currency of the United States and several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introduced the U.S. dollar at par with the Spanish silver dollar, divided it into 100 cents, and authorized the minting of coins denominated in dollars and cents. U.S. banknotes are issued in the form of Federal Reserve Notes, popularly called greenbacks due to their predominantly green color.

The monetary policy of the United States is conducted by the Federal Reserve System, which acts as the nation's central bank.

The U.S. dollar was originally defined under a bimetallic standard of (0.7735 troy ounces) fine silver or, from 1837, fine gold, or $20.67 per troy ounce. The Gold Standard Act of 1900 linked the dollar solely to gold. From 1934, its equivalence to gold was revised to $35 per troy ounce. Since 1971, all links to gold have been repealed.

The U.S. dollar became an important international reserve currency after the First World War, and displaced the pound sterling as the world's primary reserve currency by the Bretton Woods Agreement towards the end of the Second World War. The dollar is the most widely used currency in international transactions, and a free-floating currency. It is also the official currency in several countries and the ''de facto'' currency in many others, with Federal Reserve Notes (and, in a few cases, U.S. coins) used in circulation.

As of February 10, 2021, currency in circulation amounted to , of which is in Federal Reserve Notes (the remaining is in the form of coins and older-style United States Notes).

Overview

In the Constitution

Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution provides that Congress has the power " coin money." Laws implementing this power are currently codified in Title 31 of the U.S. Code, under Section 5112, which prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued.''Denominations, specifications, and design of coins''. . These coins are both designated in the section as " legal tender" in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, in contrast to the American Silver Eagle which is pure silver. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins, which have values ranging from one cent ( U.S. Penny) to 100 dollars. These other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar.

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution provides that "a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time," which is further specified by Section 331 of Title 31 of the U.S. Code. The sums of money reported in the "Statements" are currently expressed in U.S. dollars, thus the U.S. dollar may be described as the unit of account of the United States. "Dollar" is one of the first words of Section 9, in which the term refers to the Spanish milled dollar, or the coin worth eight Spanish reales.

The Coinage Act

In 1792, the U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act, of which Section 9 authorized the production of various coins, including: U.S. Congress. 1792.
Coinage Act of 1792
'. 2nd Congress, 1st Session. Sec. 9, ch. 16. Retrieved June 6, 2020.Section 20 of the Act designates the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States:

Decimal units

Unlike the Spanish milled dollar, the Continental Congress and the Coinage Act prescribed a decimal system of units to go with the unit dollar, as follows: the mill, or one-thousandth of a dollar; the cent, or one-hundredth of a dollar; the dime, or one-tenth of a dollar; and the eagle, or ten dollars. The current relevance of these units:
* Only the cent (¢) is used as everyday division of the dollar.
* The dime is used solely as the name of the coin with the value of 10 cents.
* The mill (₥) is relatively unknown, but before the mid-20th century was familiarly used in matters of sales taxes, as well as gasoline prices, which are usually in the form of $ΧΧ.ΧΧ9 per gallon (e.g., $3.599, commonly written as $).
* The eagle is also largely unknown to the general public. This term was used in the ''Coinage Act of 1792'' for the denomination of ten dollars, and subsequently was used in naming gold coins.

The Spanish peso or dollar was historically divided into eight reales (colloquially, ''bits'') – hence ''pieces of eight''. Americans also learned counting in non-decimal ''bits'' of cents before 1857 when Mexican ''bits'' were more frequently encountered than American cents; in fact this practice survived in New York Stock Exchange quotations until 2001.

In 1854, Secretary of the Treasury James Guthrie proposed creating $100, $50, and $25 gold coins, to be referred to as a '' union'', '' half union'', and ''quarter union'', respectively, thus implying a denomination of 1 Union = $100. However, no such coins were ever struck, and only patterns for the $50 half union exist.

When currently issued in circulating form, denominations less than or equal to a dollar are emitted as U.S. coins, while denominations greater than or equal to a dollar are emitted as Federal Reserve Notes, disregarding these special cases:
* Gold coins issued for circulation until the 1930s, up to the value of $20 (known as the '' double eagle'')
* Bullion or commemorative gold, silver, platinum, and palladium coins valued up to $100 as legal tender (though worth far more as bullion).
* Civil War paper currency issue in denominations below $1, i.e. fractional currency, sometimes pejoratively referred to as '' shinplasters''.

Etymology

In the 16th century, Count Hieronymus Schlick of Bohemia began minting coins known as ''joachimstalers'', named for Joachimstal, the valley in which the silver was mined. In turn, the valley's name is titled after Saint Joachim, whereby ''thal'' or ''tal'', a cognate of the English word , is German for 'valley.'"Ask US." '' National Geographic''. June 2002. p. 1. The ''joachimstaler'' was later shortened to the German '' taler'', a word that eventually found its way into many languages, including:
''tolar'' ( Czech, Slovak and Slovenian); ''daler'' ( Danish and Swedish);
''dalar'' and ''daler'' ( Norwegian); ''daler'' or ''daalder'' ( Dutch);
'' talari'' (Ethiopian);
''tallér'' ( Hungarian);
''tallero'' ( Italian);
''دولار'' (Arabic); and '' dollar'' ( English).

Though the Dutch pioneered in modern-day New York in the 17th century the use and the counting of money in silver dollars in the form of German-Dutch '' reichsthalers'' and native Dutch ''leeuwendaalders'' ('lion dollars'), it was the ubiquitous Spanish American eight-real coin which became exclusively known as the ''dollar'' since the 18th century.

Nicknames

The colloquialism '' buck(s)'' (much like the British ''quid'' for the pound sterling) is often used to refer to dollars of various nations, including the U.S. dollar. This term, dating to the 18th century, may have originated with the colonial leather trade, or it may also have originated from a poker term.

''Greenback'' is another nickname, originally applied specifically to the 19th-century Demand Note dollars, which were printed black and green on the backside, created by Abraham Lincoln to finance the North for the Civil War. It is still used to refer to the U.S. dollar (but not to the dollars of other countries). The term ''greenback'' is also used by the financial press in other countries, such as
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India.

Other well-known names of the dollar as a whole in denominations include ''greenmail'', ''green'', and ''dead presidents'', the latter of which referring to the deceased presidents pictured on most bills. Dollars in general have also been known as ''bones'' (e.g. "twenty bones" = $20). The newer designs, with portraits displayed in the main body of the obverse (rather than in cameo insets), upon paper color-coded by denomination, are sometimes referred to as ''bigface'' notes or ''Monopoly money''.

'' Piastre'' was the original French word for the U.S. dollar, used for example in the French text of the Louisiana Purchase. Though the U.S. dollar is called ''dollar'' in Modern French, the term ''piastre'' is still used among the speakers of Cajun French and New England French, as well as speakers in Haiti and other French-speaking Caribbean islands.

Nicknames specific to denomination:
* The quarter dollar coin is known as ''two bits'', betraying the dollar's origins as the "piece of eight" (bits or ''reales'').
* The $1 bill is nicknamed ''buck'' or ''single''.
* The infrequently-used $2 bill is sometimes called ''deuce'', ''Tom'', or ''Jefferson'' (after Thomas Jefferson).
* The $5 bill is sometimes called ''Lincoln'', ''fin'', ''fiver'', or ''five-spot''.
* The $10 bill is sometimes called ''sawbuck'', ''ten-spot'', or ''Hamilton'' (after Alexander Hamilton).
* The $20 bill is sometimes called ''double sawbuck'', ''Jackson'' (after Andrew Jackson), or '' double eagle''.
* The $50 bill is sometimes called a ''yardstick'', or a ''grant'', after President Ulysses S. Grant.
* The $100 bill is called ''Benjamin'', ''Benji'', ''Ben'', or ''Franklin'', referring to its portrait of Benjamin Franklin. Other nicknames include ''C-note'' (C being the Roman numeral for 100), ''century note'', or ''bill'' (e.g. ''two bills'' = $200).
* Amounts or multiples of $1,000 are sometimes called '' grand'' in colloquial speech, abbreviated in written form to ''G'', ''K'', or ''k'' (from ''kilo''; e.g. $10k = $10,000). Likewise, a ''large'' or ''stack'' can also refer to a multiple of $1,000 (e.g. "fifty large" = $50,000).

Dollar sign

The symbol , usually written before the numerical amount, is used for the U.S. dollar (as well as for many other currencies). The sign was the result of a late 18th-century evolution of the scribal abbreviation ''p^s'' for the peso, the common name for the Spanish dollars that were in wide circulation in the New World from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The ''p'' and the ''s'' eventually came to be written over each other giving rise to ''$''.

Another popular explanation is that it is derived from the Pillars of Hercules on the Spanish Coat of arms of the Spanish dollar. These Pillars of Hercules on the silver Spanish dollar coins take the form of two vertical bars (, , ) and a swinging cloth band in the shape of an ''S''.

Yet another explanation suggests that the dollar sign was formed from the capital letters ''U'' and ''S'' written or printed one on top of the other. This theory, popularized by novelist Ayn Rand in '' Atlas Shrugged'', does not consider the fact that the symbol was already in use before the formation of the United States.

History

Origins: the Spanish dollar

The U.S. dollar was introduced at par with the Spanish-American silver dollar (or ''Spanish peso'', ''Spanish milled dollar'', ''eight-real coin'', ''piece-of-eight''). The latter was produced from the rich silver mine output of Spanish America; minted in Mexico City, Potosí (Bolivia), Lima (Peru) and elsewhere; and was in wide circulation throughout the Americas, Asia and Europe from the 16th to 19th centuries. The minting of machine-milled Spanish dollars since 1732 boosted its worldwide reputation as a trade coin and positioned it to be model for the new currency of the United States.

Even after the United States Mint commenced issuing coins in 1792, locally minted ''dollars'' and ''cents'' were less abundant in circulation than Spanish American ''pesos'' and ''reales''; hence Spanish, Mexican and American dollars all remained legal tender in the United States until the Coinage Act of 1857. In particular, Colonists' familiarity with the Spanish two-''real quarter peso'' was the reason for issuing a quasi-decimal 25-cent quarter dollar coin rather than a 20-cent coin.

For the relationship between the Spanish dollar and the individual state colonial currencies, see Connecticut pound, Delaware pound

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