U.S. Economy
p> MONEY AND FINANCIAL MARKETS

A Money and the Value of Money


Money is anything generally accepted as final payment for goods and services. Throughout history many things have been used around the world as money, including gold, silver, tobacco, cattle, and rare feathers or animal skins. In the U.S. economy today, there are three basic forms of money: currency (dollar bills), coins, and checks drawn on deposits at banks and other financial firms that offer checking services. Most of the time, when households, businesses, and government agencies pay their bills they use checks, but for smaller purchases they also use currency or coins.

People can change the type of the money they hold by withdrawing funds from their checking account to receive currency or coins, or by depositing currency and coins in their checking accounts. But the money that people have in their checking accounts is really just the balance in that account, and most of those balances are never converted to currency or coins. Most people deposit their paychecks and then write checks to pay most of their bills. They only convert a small part of their pay to currency and coins. Strange as it seems, therefore, most money in the
U.S. economy is just the dollar amount written on checks or showing in checking account balances. Sometimes, economists also count money in savings accounts in broader measures of the U.S. money supply, because it is easy and inexpensive to move money from savings accounts to checking accounts.

Most people are surprised to learn that when banks make loans, the loans create new money in the economy. As we’ve seen, banks earn profits by lending out some of the money that people have deposited. A bank can make loans safely because on most days, the amount some customers are depositing in the bank is about the same amount that other customers are withdrawing. A bank with many customers holding a lot of deposits can lend out a lot of money and earn interest on those loans. But of course when that happens, the bank does not subtract the amount it has loaned out from the accounts of the people who deposited funds in savings and checking accounts. Instead, these depositors still have the money in their accounts, but now the people and firms to whom the bank has loaned money also have that money in their accounts to spend. That means the total amount of money in the economy has increased. This process is called fractional reserve banking, because after making loans the bank retains only a fraction of its deposits as reserves. The bank really could not pay all of its depositors without calling in the loans it has made. It also means that money is created when banks make loans but destroyed when loans are paid off.

At one time the dollar, like most other national currencies, was backed by a specified quantity of gold or silver held by the federal government.
At that time, people could redeem their dollars for gold or silver. But in practice paper currency is much easier to carry around than large amounts of gold or silver. Therefore, most people have preferred to hold paper money or checking balances, as long as paper currency and checks are accepted as payment for goods and services and maintain their value in terms of the amount of goods and services they can buy.

Eventually governments around the world also found it expensive to hold and guard large quantities of gold or silver. As foreign trade grew, governments found it especially difficult to transfer gold and silver to other countries that decided to redeem paper money acquired through international trade. They, too, changed to using paper currencies and writing checks against deposits in accounts. In 1971 the United States suspended the international payment of gold for U.S. currency. This action effectively ended the gold standard, the name for this official link between the dollar and the price of gold. Since then, there has been no official link between the dollar and a set price for gold, or to the amount of gold or other precious metals held by the U.S. government.

The real value of the dollar today depends only on the amount of goods and services a dollar can purchase. That purchasing power depends primarily on the relationship between the number of dollars people are holding as currency and in their checking and savings accounts, and the quantity of goods and services that are produced in the economy each year. If the number of dollars increases much more rapidly than the quantity of goods and services produced each year, or if people start spending the dollars they hold more rapidly, the result is likely to be inflation. Inflation is an increase in the average price of all goods and services. In other words, it is a decrease in the value of what each dollar can buy.

The Federal Reserve System and Monetary Policy

Governments often attempt to reduce inflation by controlling the supply of money. Consequently, organizations that control how much money is issued in an economy play a major role in how the economy performs, in terms of prices, output and employment levels, and economic growth. In the United States, that organization is the nation’s central bank, the
Federal Reserve System. The system’s name comes from the fact that the
Federal Reserve has the legal authority to make banks hold some of their deposits as reserves, which means the banks cannot lend out those deposits. These reserve funds are held in the Federal Reserve Bank. The
Federal Reserve also acts as the banker for the federal government, but the government does not own the Federal Reserve. It is actually owned by the nation’s banks, which by law must join the Federal Reserve System and observe its regulations.

There are 12 regional Federal Reserve banks. These banks are not commercial banks. They do not accept savings deposits from or provide loans to individuals or businesses. Instead, the Federal Reserve functions as a central bank for other banks and for the federal government. In that role the Federal Reserve System performs several important functions in the national economy. First, the branches of the
Federal Reserve distribute paper currency in their regions. Dollar bills are actually Federal Reserve notes. You can look at a dollar bill of any denomination and see the number for the regional Federal Reserve Bank where the bill was originally issued. But of course the dollar is a national currency, so a bill issued by any regional Federal Reserve Bank is good anyplace in the country. The distribution of currency occurs as commercial banks convert some of their reserve balances at the Federal
Reserve System into currency, and then provide that currency to bank depositors who decide to hold some of their money balances as currency rather than deposits in checking accounts. The U.S. Treasury prints new currency for the Federal Reserve System. The bills are introduced into circulation when commercial banks use their reserves to buy currency from the Federal Reserve Bank.

Second, the regional Federal Reserve banks transfer funds for checks that are deposited by a bank in one part of the country, but were written by someone who has a checking account with a bank in another part of the country. Millions of checks are processed this way every business day.
Third, the regional Federal Reserve Banks collect and analyze data on the economic performance of their regions, and provide that information and their analysis of it to the national Federal Reserve System. Each of the
12 regions served by the Federal Reserve banks has its own economic characteristics. Some of these regional economies are concerned more with agricultural issues than others; some with different types of manufacturing and industries; some with international trade; and some with financial markets and firms. After reviewing the reports from all different parts of the country, the national Federal Reserve System then adopts policies that have major effects on the entire U.S. economy.

By far the most important function of the Federal Reserve System is controlling the nation’s money supply and the overall availability of credit in the economy. If the Federal Reserve System wants to put more money in the economy, it does not ask the Treasury to print more dollar bills. Remember, much more money is held in checking and savings accounts than as currency, and it is through those deposit accounts that the
Federal Reserve System most directly controls the money supply. The
Federal Reserve affects deposit accounts in one of three ways.

First, it can allow banks to hold a smaller percentage of their deposits as reserves at the Federal Reserve System. A lower reserve requirement allows banks to make more loans and earn more money from the interest paid on those loans. Banks making more loans increase the money supply.
Conversely, a higher reserve requirement reduces the amount of loans banks can make, which reduces or tightens the money supply.

The second way the Federal Reserve System can put more money into the economy is by lowering the rate it charges banks when they borrow money from the Federal Reserve System. This particular interest rate is known as the discount rate. When the discount rate goes down, it is more likely that banks will borrow money from the Federal Reserve System, to cover their reserve requirements and support more loans to borrowers. Once again, those loans will increase the nation’s money supply. Therefore, a decrease in the discount rate can increase the money supply, while an increase in the discount rate can decrease the money supply.

In practice, however, banks rarely borrow money from the Federal Reserve, so changes in the discount rate are more important as a signal of whether the Federal Reserve wants to increase or decrease the money supply. For example, raising the discount rate may alert banks that the Federal
Reserve might take other actions, such as increasing the reserve requirement. That signal can lead banks to reduce the amount of loans they are making.

The third way the Federal Reserve System can adjust the supply of money and the availability of credit in the economy is through its open market operations—the buying or selling of government bonds. Open market operations are actually the tool that the Federal Reserve uses most often to change the money supply. These open-market operations take place in the market for government securities. The U.S. government borrows money by issuing bonds that are regularly auctioned on the bond market in New
York. The Federal Reserve System is one of the largest purchasers of those bonds, and the bank changes the amount of money in the economy when it buys or sells bonds.

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