Saturday, 6 October 2012

History of the USA paper currency

As we have shown in our posts on monetary policy, the creation of paper money - and later, pure fiat money, money which derives it's value only from a governmental guarantee - was a lenghty and often chaotic process. This was especially the case in the United States of America, where the lack of a federal central bank made issuing a strong local currency difficult at best. The following infographic tells the intriguing history of the United States dollar, going back more than 200 years.

Click on the image to enlarge.


  1. You're more interested when they printed "in god we trust" than when Nixon took us off the gold standard?

    1. Hi Joseph, by all means no. Actually, the second link of this article deals with the gold standard, as part of a three-post long concluded series.