History Of Money Essay -- essays research papers

What is Money? At first sight the answer to this question seems obvious. A man or woman in the street would agree on coins and banknote which could be known as checks, for a good or a service but would they accept them from any country? They would probably be less willing to accept them than their own country's coins and notes but bank money actually accounts for by far the greatest proportion by value of the total supply of money. Credit cards and gold are some what different. The gold standard belongs to history but even today in many rich people in different parts of the world would rather keep some of their wealth in the form of gold than in official, inflation-prone currencies. Gold is a attractive type of material which led to its use for monetary transactions for thousands of years. All sorts of things have been used as money at different times in different places. Like amber, beads, cowries, drums, eggs, feathers, gongs, hoes, ivory, jade, kettles, leather, mats, nails, oxen, pigs, quartz, rice, salt, thimbles, umiacs, vodka, wampum, yarns, and zappozats (decorated axes). It is almost impossible to define money in terms of its physical form or properties since these are so diverse. Therefore any definition must be based on its functions, which are units of account, common measure of value ,medium of exchange, and store of value. So with that in mind money is anything that is widely used for making payments and accounting for debts and credits. Money originated becau...