The Root of It All
…not evil, necessarily, but money is what we exchange in return for goods and services. It’s how we place value on the work we do, on the things we buy and on how we save. Money is the foundation of our economy. The use of bartering can be traced back some 100,000 years, and gold and silver coins are believed to have been first used around 650 B.C. After World War II, most countries adopted currencies that were fixed to the U.S. dollar, which was, in turn, fixed to gold. When the U.S. suspended convertibility of the dollar to gold in 1971, many countries disassociated their currencies from the U.S. dollar. Then, most of the world’s currencies became unbacked by anything except the governments’ decree of legal tender. What's legal tender? It is the legally valid currency for meeting a financial obligation.