Деньги - Money. Невежина С.Б - 38 стр.

       Trading is very expensive in a barter economy. People spend a         it must be a store of value as well. And it is usually, though not
lot of time and effort finding others with whom they can make swaps.         always, convenient to make money the unit of account and standard of
Nowadays, there exist actually no purely barter economies, but               deferred payment.
economies nearer to or farther from the barter type. The closer is the
economy to the barter type, the more wasteful it is.                                 Different Kinds of Money
       Serving as a medium of exchange is presumed to have for                       In prisoner-of-war camps, cigarettes served as money. In the
centuries been an essential function of money.                               nineteenth century money was mainly gold and silver coins. These are
                                                                             examples of commodity money, ordinary goods with industrial uses
       Other Functions of Money                                              (gold) and consumption uses (cigarettes) which also serve as a medium
       The unit of account is the unit in which prices are quoted and        of exchange. To use a commodity money, society must either cut back
accounts are kept. In Britain, for instance, prices are quoted in pounds     on other uses of that commodity or devote scarce resources to producing
sterling; in France, in French francs. It is usually convenient to use the   additional quantities of the commodity. But there are less expensive
same unit to measure the medium of exchange as well as to quote              ways for society to produce money.
prices and keep accounts in. However, there may be exceptions.                       A token money is a means of payment whose value or purchasing
During the rapid German inflation of 1922–23 when prices in marks            power as money greatly exceeds its cost of production or value in uses
were changing very quickly, German shopkeepers found it more                 other than as money.
convenient to use US dollars as the unit of account. Prices were quoted              A $10 note is worth far more as money than as a 3×6 inch piece
in dollars though payment was made in marks. The same goes for               of high-quality paper. Similarly, the monetary value of most coins
Russia and other post-communist economies that used the US dollar as         exceeds the amount you would get by melting them down and selling
a unit of account, keeping their national currencies as means of actual      off the metals they contain. By collectively agreeing to use token
payment. The higher is the inflation rate, the greater is the probability    money, society economizes on the scarce resources required to produce
of introducing a temporary unit of account alongside the existing units      money as a medium of exchange. Since the manufacturing costs are
for measuring medium of exchange.                                            tiny, why doesn't everyone make $10 notes?
       Money is a store of value, for it can be used to make purchases               The essential condition for the survival of token money is the
in future. For money to be accepted in exchange, it has to be a store of     restriction of the right to supply it. Private production is illegal. Society
value. Nobody would accept money as payment for goods supplied               enforces the use of token money by making it legal tender. The law
today if the money was going to be worthless when they tried to buy          says it must be accepted as a means of payment.
goods with it tomorrow. But money is neither the only nor necessarily                In modern economies, token money is supplemented by IOU
the best store of value. Houses, stamp collections, and interest-bearing     money.
bank accounts all serve as stores of value.                                          An IOU money is a medium of exchange based on the debt of a
       Finally, money serves as a standard of deferred payment or a          private firm or individual. A bank deposit is IOU money because it is a
unit of account over time. When money is borrowed, the amount to be          debt of the bank. When you have a bank deposit the bank owes you
repaid next year is measured in units of national currency, pounds of        money. You can write a cheque to yourself or a third party and the
sterling for the United Kingdom, for example. Although convenient,           bank is obliged to pay whenever the cheque is presented. Bank deposits
this is not an essential function of money. UK citizens can get bank         are a medium of exchange because they are generally accepted as
loans specifying in dollars the amount that must be repaid next year.        payment.
       Thus, the key feature of money is its use as a medium of
exchange. For money to be used successfully as a means of exchange,

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