Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
"DOLLARS" is a plural of: dollar. |
Date "DOLLARS" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1590. (references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The Canadian dollar (CAD) is the unit of currency of Canada. It is divided into 100 cents. The dollar has been used for most of Canada's history.
Canadian Coins Value Common name Composition Obverse Reverse Mass Diameter Thickness $0.01 penny
(Fr. cent noir)94% steel, 1.5% nickel, 4.5% copper plating The Queen Maple leaf 2.35 g 19.05 mm 1.45 mm $0.05 nickel 94.5% steel, 3.5% copper, 2% nickel plating The Queen Beaver 3.95 g 21.2 mm 1.76 mm $0.10 dime 92% steel, 5.5% copper, 2.5% nickel plating The Queen The Bluenose (a famous schooner) 1.75 g 18.03 mm 1.22 mm $0.25 quarter 94% steel, 3.8% copper, 2.2% nickel plating The Queen Caribou 4.4 g 23.88 mm 1.58 mm $0.50 half-dollar† 93.15% steel, 4.75% copper, 2.1% nickel plating The Queen Canadian coat of arms 6.9 g 27,13 mm 1.95 mm $1.00 loonie
(Fr. huard)91.5% nickel 8.5% bronze plating The Queen Common loon 7 g 26.5 mm 1.75 mm $2.00 toonie or twonie Rim - 99% nickel; core - 92% copper, 6% aluminum, 2% nickel The Queen Polar bear 7.3 g 28 mm 1.8 mm † Not in general circulation.
Canadian Banknotes
1986 (Birds) series Value Colour Obverse Reverse $2.00‡ Terra cotta The Queen American robins $5.00‡ Blue Wilfrid Laurier Kingfisher $10.00‡ Purple John A. Macdonald Osprey $20.00 Green The Queen Common loon $50.00 Red Mackenzie King Snowy owl $100.00 Brown Robert Borden Canada goose $1000.00‡ Reddish purple The Queen Pine grosbeak 2001 ("Canadian Journey") series $5.00 Blue Wilfrid Laurier Children playing ice hockey and other winter sports; excerpt from The Hockey Sweater by Roch Carrier $10.00 Purple John A. Macdonald Peacekeeping forces and war memorial; excerpt from "In Flanders' Fields" by John McCrae ‡ Withdrawn from circulation. Currency withdrawn from circulation is still legal tender and can be redeemed at banks, but merchants are not required to accept it. As of this writing, the 1986-series $5 and $10 notes are still commonplace, and one can occasionally see $20 and $100 bills that antedate even the 1986 series.
All banknotes measure 152.4 by 69.85 mm.
Canadian currency rumours
A number of urban legends circulate regarding Canadian currency.
- An American flag is flying over the Parliament buildings on the obverse of a Canadian note. This is not the case. The Birds series notes depict a Union Jack flying over Parliament on the $100 note; a Red Ensign (a former Canadian flag) on the $5, $10, and $50 notes; and the modern maple-leaf flag on the former $2 and $1000 notes. Each of these represents the flag that Canada was using at the time of the Prime Minister depicted on the bill. (The $20 depicts the Library of Parliament, with no flag visible.)
- The new series $10 bill is being recalled because there is a misprint in the poem In Flanders' Fields. The first line as printed, "In Flanders' fields the poppies blow," startled many people, who believed the last word should be "grow." John McCrae wrote two versions which were both published, but his original manuscript, the one used by the government and widely used for Remembrance Day ceremonies, reads "blow," meaning to bloom. (The last two lines are, "We shall not sleep, though poppies grow/In Flanders' fields.")
- You can pop the centre out of a toonie. This is (or was) in fact true. Many toonies in the first shipment of the coins were defective, and could separate if struck hard. This problem was quickly corrected.
Value
Inflation in the value of the Canadian Dollar has been fairly low since the 1990s, but had been severe for some decades before that.
Although it was more valuable than the United States dollar for part of the 1970s, since then it has slipped and is currently holding at approximately 2/3 of the value of the US dollar. On May 1, 2003, the Canadian dollar moved above $0.70 US for the first time since April 23, 1998. It has since risen above $0.75 US, bringing the currency's year-to-date rally against the USD past 16 percent.
The rise in the value of the Canadian Dollar has more to do with weakness in the American Dollar than the Canadian Dollar itself. The American Dollar has lost value against most major currencies due to concerns about the American economy. However, many economist believe that the Canadian Dollar was undervalued compared to the American Dollar given the actual economic situation in both countries.
Although there was a great deal of domestic concern when the Canadian dollar was trading much lower than the US Dollar, there is now even more concern amongst the economic community because of the suddenly higher dollar. The rapid rise in the value of the Canadian Dollar will hurt the profitability of Canadian exports to the United States which make up a large part of the economy.
The Canadian Dollar has recently lost value against the Euro, trading in October 2003 at 0.65 Euros to the dollar.
External Links
- A History of the Canadian Dollar
- Bank of Canada - Bank Notes
- Royal Canadian Mint - Circulation Coins
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Canadian dollar."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
The dollar is the name of the official currency in several countries, dependencies and other regions, including Australia, Canada, the East Caribbean, Liberia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore and the United States. It is represented by the symbol $, placed before the dollar amount (in French Canada, after).
The dollar was also in use in Scotland during the 17th century, and there is a claim that it was invented at the University of St Andrews.
The name is related to the historic currencies Tolar, in Bohemia, Thaler, in Germany and Daler, in Sweden. The name thaler (from thal, valley) originally came from the guldengroschen (great gulden, being of silver but equal in value to a gold gulden) coins minted from the silver from a rich mine at St. Joachimstal (St. Joachim's Valley) in Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic). The name Spanish dollar was used for a Spanish silver coin, the peso, an 8 real coin, which was widely circulated during the 18th century in the Spanish colonies in the New World. The use of the Spanish dollar and the Maria Theresa thaler as legal tender for the early United States is the reason for the name of that nation's currency. The word dollar was in use in the English language for the thaler for about 200 years prior to the American Revolution. Spanish dollars, or pieces of eight as they were called, were in circulation in the 13 colonies that became the United States and legal tender in Virginia.
See also:
Petro-dollars is money from petroleum.
- Australian dollar
- Barbados dollar
- Bahamian dollar
- Belize dollar
- Bermuda dollar
- Brunei dollar
- Canadian dollar
- Cayman Islands dollar
- East Caribbean dollar
- Fiji dollar
- Guyanese dollar
- Hong Kong dollar
- Jamaica dollar
- Liberian dollar
- Namibian dollar
- New Zealand dollar
- Singapore dollar
- Solomon Islands dollar
- New Taiwan dollar
- Trinidad and Tobago dollar
- United States dollar
- Zimbabwe dollar
Dollar were a light pop duo from the UK, who had a series of hit records in the late 1970s. They were David Van Day and Theresa Bazar.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Dollar."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Denomination ($) Portrait 1 George Washington 2 Thomas Jefferson 5 Abraham Lincoln 10 Alexander Hamilton 20 Andrew Jackson 50 Ulysses S. Grant 100 Benjamin Franklin 500† William McKinley 1000† Grover Cleveland 5,000† James Madison 10,000† Salmon P. Chase 100,000† Woodrow Wilson †Not in general circulation. The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. It is also widely used as a reserve currency outside of the United States. Currently, the issuance of currency is controlled by the Federal Reserve Banking system. The most commonly used symbol for the U.S. dollar is the dollar sign ($). The ISO 4217 code for the United States Dollar is USD.
Overview
The U.S. dollar is divided into 100 centss. Originally, it was further divided into 1000 millss, a currency unit used until World War II made aluminum too expensive to be used for the coins (and rising inflation made them essentially worthless).
The U.S. is one of many countries that use a currency named dollar: see dollar.
When currently issued in circulating form, denominations equal to or less than a dollar are emitted as coins while denominations equal to or greater than a dollar are emitted as Federal Reserve notes. (Both one dollar coins and notes exist; although the note form is significantly more common.)
Modern U.S. dollar banknotes have been printed by the Federal Reserve since 1929. Notes above the $100 denomination ceased being printed in 1946. These notes were used primarily in inter-bank transactions. However, with the advent of electronic banking, they became useless.
History
The dollar was unanimously chosen as the money unit for the United States on July 6, 1785. This was the first time a nation had adopted a decimal coinage system.
Until 1974 the value of the United States dollar was tied to and backed by either silver, gold, or a combination of the two. From 1792 to 1873 the U.S. dollar was freely backed by both gold and silver at a ratio of 15:1 under a system known as bimetallism. Through a series of legislative changes from 1873 to 1900, the status of silver was slowly diminished until 1900 when a gold standard was formally adopted. The gold standard survived, with several modifications, until 1974.
Bimetallism
The U.S. Coinage Act of 1792 established the United States Mint and set the following definition for a dollar:
It also pegged the rate of exchange between pure silver and pure gold at 15:1. Thus the dollar was defined to be 371.25 grains of silver or 24.75 grains of gold and could be exchanged at the mint for either silver or gold in this 15:1 ratio. This standard, known as bimetallism, was used through much of the nineteenth century.
- "Dollars or Units—each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenths parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver."
In 1834, due to a drop in the value of silver, the 15:1 ratio was changed to a 16:1 ratio. This created a new US dollar that was backed by 1.50 grams (23.2 grains) of gold. However, the previous dollar had been represented by 1.60 grams (24.75 grains) of gold. The result of this revaluation which was the first ever devaluation of the US dollar reducing its gold value by 6%.
The discovery of large silver deposits in the Western United States in the late 19th century created a political controversy. At one side were agrarian interests who wanted to retain the bimetallic standard which would result in a cheaper dollar, which would allow farmers to more easily repay their debts. At the other end, there were Eastern banking and commercial interests who advocated sound money and a switch to the gold standard. This issue split the Democratic party in 1896 and led to the famous cross of gold speech given by William Jennings Bryan.
In 1878 the Bland-Allison Act was enacted to provide for freer coinage of silver. This act required the government to purchase between $2 million and $4 million worth of silver bullion each month at market prices and to coin it into silver dollars. This was, in effect, a subsidy for politically influential silver producers.
US Federal Reserve notes - "Greenbacks"
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Criticisms of U.S. banknotes
Despite the addition of color to US currency, critics hold that it will still be straightforward to counterfeit the bills. They cite that the ability to reproduce color images is well within the capabilities of modern color printers, most of which are affordable to many consumers. These critics suggest that the Federal Reserve should make use of holographic panels, such as some Australian currency and the euro banknotes do, which are much more difficult and expensive to forge.
Critics also state that bills should employ braille codes to make the currency more usable by the vision impaired, since the denominations are all the same size, and cannot be distinguished from one another non-visually.
International use of the U.S. dollar
A few nations outside of US jurisdiction use the United States dollar (USD) as their official currency. These nations include Ecuador, Palau, East Timor, Panama and the Federated States of Micronesia. Argentina used a fixed 1-1 exchange rate between the Argentine peso and the US dollar from 1991 until 2002. The exchange rate between the Hong Kong dollar and the United States dollar has also been fixed since the early 1980s, and the renminbi used by the People's Republic of China has been informally and controversially pegged against the dollar since the mid-1990s.
The dollar is also used as the standard unit of currency in international markets for commodities such as gold and oil.
At the present time, the United States dollar remains the world's foremost reserve currency, primarily held in $100 denominations. According to economist Paul Samuelson, the overseas demand for dollars allows the United States to maintain persistent trade deficits without causing the value of the currency to depreciate and the flow of trade to readjust.
The majority of American money is actually held outside of the United States.
Origin of the name Dollar
The name for the United States dollar comes from the Spanish dollar (which itself derived from the thaler) which was the silver coin widely circulated in the United States during the time of the American Revolutionary War. Although private banks issued currency that was backed in Spanish dollars, the Federal government didn't do so until the American Civil War.
See also: Table of historical exchange rates
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "United States dollar."
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Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
