 The United States Mint announced that new dollar coins will begin being minted featuring the images of all 37 of the nation's deceased Presidents. President Bush signed a law that provided for this new line of Presidential coinage. Lawmakers believe that these new dollar coins, together with $10 gold pieces featuring the First Ladies, will be a big money raiser for the government, rather like the fifty state quarter program of prior years. Lawmakers also have hopes that the new Presidential dollar coins will spur interest in the Sacagawea dollars which have been little used thus far. The backside of the Presidential coins will feature the Statue of Liberty. Four coins will be issued each year beginning in 2007. The coins will be issued in the order of the President's term in office. The Secretary of the Treasury will oversee coin design.
Money history and the theory of "equivalent exchange":
The monetary sector still remains as a mystery to economists. While the process of issuance of banknotes and coins is regulated, then what is happening with the money once they get into a boiling cauldron of public, cannot be formalized. Money is beginning to live on its own, it disappears, disperses, evaporates, leading to what we are witnessing crises or, on contrary, the economy booms. To this day the theory of money is one of the pressing areas of social sciences.
In the XVI-XVIII centuries, a direction called "mercantilism” has formed in the Europe. Its followers defined a country's wealth simply as the amount of gold accumulated by the state, though aware that unrestricted inflow of gold leads to higher prices. Subsequent discussions on this issue raised various views on how to regulate the amount of money so as to exert influence on the processes in the economy.
In mid XIX century, there dominated a different view on this issue: money on its own does not affect economic processes and be disregarded during the analysis of the later. It was compared with "a track", facilitating the promotion of products to the market, either with "grease" of good circulation, or with "veil", enveloping economic relations, which must be just discarded. Basically it was represented as a technical tool, making life easier. As long as this tool works properly and does not break, business process can be regarded as similar to the barter, in which, practically it does not matter whether the money is available or not. Quantitative theory became substantial, based on which prices depend on the amount of money and changes proportionally to the change in amount of money. But in the thirties of XX century, inflation and unemployment in the western world have brought their own amendments to this scheme. Renowned British scientist John Keynes spoke of unforeseen factors and risks in the economy, and that money is the "anchor of stability” in the unstable capital world.
"Our desire to keep the money is a barometer of our discredit to own calculations and commonly agreed view about the future" - Keynes wrote. In other words, if there occurs leak of money in the circular flow of income, then things are bad in the country - the population salts away money for a evil day. After World War II economic theory has once again came back to the topic of money. American Milton Friedman once again drew attention to the quantity of money in the economy. Economic crises, as he noted, are caused by fluctuation in money supply and by incorrect monetary policy. "Only money has a value" - Friedman used to say. In 1976, This American won the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the development of monetarism (such called his theory). |
