The dollar or “the buck”

The dollar (from German “thaler) was declared as a monetary unit on July the 6th 1785 by the Continental Congress. At first the dollar was a silver coin. In 1861 the first bank notes came into circulation; they were printed on a special flax-cotton thread with green paint. One edge of notes was rough. In the mint they kept a stub the opposite edge of which was the exact copy of the banknote of a certain series. They compared banknotes with it and determined their authenticity.
In August 1862 the Bureau of engraving and printing was opened. Four women and two men started to imprint on 1- and 2- dollar banknotes that were printed by private companies in the basement of the Ministry of Finance. National money printing started in 1863 and by 1877 all the currency of the USA was printed at the Bureau. Today in the USA the banknotes of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, 1000, 5000 and 10.000 dollar worth, which were not printed before 1928, circulate. But banknotes of higher than $100 worth are forbidden to be exported out of the country. Printing of 10.000 dollar banknotes has been stopped since July, 1944 and by the end of the 80s there were only 348 such banknotes. In 1969 the US Treasury declared the suspension of further printing of higher than 100 dollar worth banknotes. The last 2 dollar banknote was printed in 1976.

Money On the right side of the 500 dollar worth banknote there is a portrait of McKinley - 25th president of the USA, the 1000 dollar worth banknote has the portrait of Steven Cleveland who was 22d and 24th president, the 5000 dollar worth banknote – James Madison, 4th president, the 10.000 dollar worth – financier Portland Chase. The popular word “buck” has an American origin. It means “a deer”. It was deer horns and hides that were used as money equivalent in Great Britain. The word came into use in the New World as it was also inhabited by the English.
HOW MUCH is HAPPINESS?Answering the question “how much do you need for happiness?” 9 out of 10 people will name a definite sum of money in rubles or dollars. This is the percentage of people in the society who are sure that happiness can be estimated in money. How wrong are they?
Two or three years ago there was a report in the newspapers about a businessman from Wall-Street who committed a suicide after unsuccessful stock exchange operations and lost two third of his fortune in one day. The paradox was that initially his fortune was… 5 million dollars! Even after “the bankruptcy” there were still more than $1,5 millions on the unlucky person’s account left. Having that amount of money is the summit of many people’s dreams, but in this case the owner of $1,5 millions was sure he was very unhappy.