Money Essay

944 Words2 Pages

Money is a necessity in everyday life within the modern world and there are different ways to define money due to a variety of perceptions and views held by a wide range of people. However it is widely accepted that money is defined as a tool that serves as a medium of exchange, a unit of account which means that it is an agreed measure for recording the prices of goods and services, and a store of value. It also has to be firstly acceptable as a medium of exchange, durable, convenient for usage and finally divisible. There are different types of money which are Commodity Money, Convertible Paper Money, Fiat Money which isn’t convertible, Private Debt Money which are deposits and Composite Currencies such as the Euro. Every country has its own form of currency which is used as a medium of exchange within that particular country although there are countries which share a form of currency such as those in the European union which share the euro. Currency in one country can be exchanged for that of another country based on the exchange rate. An example of this is between the euro and the US dollar where the exchange rate is that 1 euro can buy approximately 1.2396 US dollars. The definition of the money supply is the amount of money in the economy measured according to different methods and principles and it is determined through the monetary policy by the central bank in which the economy has to work with the set amount of money. The monetary supply is positioned in order to curtail inflation in prices because inflation takes place the moment there is an increase in output. The demand for money now points to the desire to hold money which is to keep wealth in the form of money instead of spending it on goods or services or even i... ... middle of paper ... ...urage people to hold more money and less bonds. One way to determine this is that an excess supply of money causes there to be an excess demand for bonds which causes the price of the bonds to rise and thus brings down the interest rate. However, in contrast, if the interest rate is below the equilibrium rate, this causes there to be an excess demand for money and since people will want to hold more money than available this then causes people to attempt to sell bonds for the purpose of increasing their hold in money and thus drives down the bond prices and causes the rates of interest to rise. So from all of this we see that money is defined mainly as a medium of exchanged but we also determined that it is the central bank which measures money. We also established why money is held and how it is linked with interest and inflation rates when positioned with bonds.

Open Document