Money bill

“ But, moreover, the Commons have always contended that the Lords cannot originate or alter a Money Bill, but it has never been contended that the Lords may not reject a Money Bill, though there are few instances of their having done so. ”

“ But, nevertheless, Congress should later pass a permanent currency bill, a bill which will settle every question as to the finances of the nation, at once and for a century to come. Such a bill is possible, and in fact it would be the simplest kind of measure for the Government to adopt—one to provide for just the kind of currency, and the amount of currency the business of the nation, the banks, and the people should have; one to provide for a perfectly elastic currency without creating the slightest depreciation of money or danger of loss to banks or Government. ”

“ You buy a little ribbon, a few pairs of gloves, some handkerchiefs—mere items in fact, and yet when quarter day comes round you are presented with a bill a yard long, which as your next instalment of money is fully mortgaged, is calculated to fill you with anything but extreme joy.
Why are the paths leading to destruction always so much easier of access than any other? It takes so much less time to run up a bill, it is so much simpler to say, "Will you please enter it to my account?" than to pay your money down. ”

“ A dealer who has sold goods, for which he is to be paid in six months, but who desires to receive payment sooner, draws a bill on his debtor payable in six months, and gets the bill discounted by a banker or other money-lender, that is, transfers the bill to him, receiving the amount, minus interest for the time it has still to run. It has become one of the chief functions of bills of exchange to serve as a means by which a debt due from one person can thus be made available for obtaining credit from another. ”

“ The bill broker has, in one shape or other, to pay interest on every sixpence left with him, and that constant habit of giving interest has this grave consequence:—the bill broker cannot afford to keep much money unemployed. ”

“ You cannot create the necessity of a bank, and then plead that necessity for its establishment. In the administration of the finances, the bank acts simply as a payer and receiver. The secretary of the treasury has money in New York, and wants it in Charleston; the bank will furnish him with a check, or bill, to make the remittance, which any merchant would do just as well. ”

“ In the Treasury Building and in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing one may see the entire process of manufacturing and issuing paper money. In the Treasury we see new bills exchanged for old, worn-out bills, which are ground to pieces to destroy forever their value as money.
BUREAU OF ENGRAVING AND PRINTING, “UNCLE SAM'S MONEY FACTORY”
But to understand the story of a dollar bill or a bill of any other value we must visit the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. ”

“ The bills of banks pass as money. A bank bill or note is a promise of the bank to pay the bearer a certain sum on demand, signed by the president and cashier. It passes as money, because the bank is bound to pay it in specie if it is demanded. Paying notes thus is redeeming them. When a bank is unable to redeem all its bills, it is said to have failed, or to be broken; and the bill holders suffer loss, unless some security has been provided. ”

“ Always make a point of discounting your bills, even if you have to borrow money from the bank to do it. Let me illustrate what this will save you. Suppose that you can take a two per cent. discount by paying a bill in ten days. Now suppose you allow the bill to run to thirty days. You lose that two per cent. for an accommodation of twenty days. That is at the rate of thirty-six per cent. a year. You can borrow money from the bank at the rate of six per cent. a year, and make so much clear saving. ”

“ It will be asked, how will the two masses of Continental and of State money have cost the people of the United States seventy-two millions of dollars, when they are to be redeemed, now, with about six millions? I answer, that the difference, being sixty-six millions, has been lost on the paper bills, separately, by the successive holders of them. Every one, through whose hands a bill passed, lost on that bill what it lost in value, during the time it was in his hands. ”

“ Why for years and years and years it’ll go on from one pocket to another, in a millionaire’s house one day, in some burglar’s flat the next, maybe, and in one person’s hand money’ll do good, likely, and in another’s it’ll do harm. ”

“ A power to lay taxes for the purpose of paying the debts of the United States. But no debt is paid by this bill, nor any tax laid. Were it a bill to raise money, its origination in the Senate would condemn it by the constitution.
2. To ‘borrow money.’ But this bill neither borrows money, nor insures the borrowing it. The proprietors of the bank will be just as free as any other money-holders, to lend or not to lend their money to the public. ”

“ But you sometimes lend money upon bills deposited with you by bill brokers?—Yes.
1172. And you occasionally call in that money and re-deliver those securities?—Yes; but that we do to a very small extent.
1173. Is not that equivalent to a re-discount of bills?—No; the discount of a bill and the lending money on bills are very different things. When we discount a bill, that bill becomes our property ”

“ Shaytop.”
“Perhaps I am, but—”
“Never mind; if you don’t want the note, you can have the money. It don’t make much difference to me, though it would be more convenient to pay the bill at another time than now. There isn’t the least need of making use of any strong language.”
“Pay me, and I won’t use any, then.”
[67]
I opened my porte-monnaie and took therefrom the roll of bills I had received from Aunt Rachel. A five hundred dollar bill was on the top, and the balance of the pile was in hundreds and fifties. ”

“ Buying and remitting commercial long bills is no pastime for an inexperienced man. Entirely aside from the question of rate, and profit on the exchange end of the transaction, there must be taken into consideration the matter of the credit of the drawer and the drawee, the salability of the merchandise specified in the bill of lading, and a number of other important points. ”

“ Now, sir, if you manage this business properly, you can clear twenty thousand dollars in a year. You have unusual advantages for passing the bills with perfect safety. Always ruffle them up to make them appear dirty and old. You can pass one of my bills at every store, and as the change you receive will be genuine, you will be enabled to clear at least two thousand dollars a month. Not one in a thousand of your neighbors can distinguish a genuine bill from one of mine. Therefore you are foolish for not grasping an opportunity to make money that may never occur again. ”

“ Then comes the term bills of credit, without any reference of explanatory words; but as it necessarily relates to the payment of money, the word bill must be taken as a paper, containing some evidence that a certain sum is due, to the person to whom it was emitted or issued, or by whom it was held. It is a word of legal import, as well defined as any in the English language, according to the subject-matter to which it is applied. 'A bill is a common engagement for money given by one man to another ”

“ Shull, with a note of regret in his voice. “These big bugs with plenty o’ money always have to be waited on. It ain’t right, but it has to be. Besides, you can always slide on an extra quarter or so when you send in the bill. That sort o’ evens the thing up. Now, in her case, for instance, where we’d charge ordinary folks a dollar for two daguerreotypes, we can send her in a bill for—”
Neither Mr. ”

“ There are going to be other families -- because of the choices they make, not the government -- that will use that money to invest, to save. Other people are going to use it to pay off their credit card bill, as I indicated. ”

“ The principal mode in which money is raised by traders is by "bills of exchange"; the estimated certainty of their paying those bills on the day they fall due is the measure of their credit; and those who estimate that liability best, the only persons indeed who ^can estimate it exceedingly well, are the bill brokers. And these dealers, taking advantage of their peculiar knowledge, borrow immense sums from bankers and others; they generally deposit the bills as a security; and they generally give their own guarantee of the goodness of the bill ”

“ The rate of discount for trade bills is usually 1/2 per cent. per annum higher than the rate for bank bills.
The essential feature of almost all the bills on the market is that they represent a commercial transaction, such as a sale of goods, where value passes. It is this that lends them their self-liquidating quality; for they are usually liquidated by the acceptor out of the proceeds of the resale of the goods during the currency of the bill. ”

“ But in modern bill-broking the credit of the bill-broker is a vital element. The lender considers that the bill-broker—no matter whether an individual, a company, or a firm—has considerable wealth, and he takes the 'bills,' relying that the broker would not venture that wealth by guaranteeing them unless he thought them good. ”

“ They are only the tangible expression of the claim for money in another centre, and at this early stage of our inquiry it is better to keep our minds fixed on what is at the back of the bill, namely, the money in a foreign centre to which it gives its holder a claim. ”

“ We have to cut the deficit because the more we spend paying off the debt, the less tax dollars we have to invest in jobs and education and the future of this country. And the more money we take out of the pool of available savings, the harder it is for people in the private sector to borrow money at affordable interest rates for a college loan for their children, for a home mortgage, or to start a new business.
That's why we've got to reduce the debt, because it is crowding out other activities that we ought to be engaged in and that the American people ought to be engaged in. ”

“ Not to strangers who are in the habit of bringing you in bills; commercial houses?—I should say generally not. We have one or two houses for whom we discount who have not accounts with us as bankers, but generally we do not discount except for our customers or for bill brokers. ”

“ A bank in New York may buy $1,000,000 worth of sterling bills drawn on England and send them forward to its London agent to be discounted with the bill broker. The bill broker will discount these bills at, say, 4 per cent. If he thinks rates are likely to fall, he will hold the bills; if he thinks them likely to rise, he will try to sell the bills at about 3-3/4 per cent. or 3-7/8 per cent. discount, thus making a profit on the transaction of 1/4 per cent. or 1/8 per cent. per annum. Similarly he may discount large parcels of bills for Eastern and South American banks. ”

“ I also want you to know I'm going to send you new legislation to go after what these drug barons value the most — their money. And I hope you'll pass that as well.
In a world where over a billion people live on less than a dollar a day, we also have got to do our part in the global endeavor to reduce the debts of the poorest countries, so they can invest in education, health care and economic growth. That's what the Pope and other religious leaders have urged us to do. And last year, Congress made a down payment on America's share. ”

“ Can you believe that a child who has a child gets more money from the Government for leaving home than for staying home with a parent or a grandparent? That's not just bad policy, it's wrong. And we ought to change it. ”

“ The Wish of every discerning honest Man must be as obvious, viz that as many of the Bills may sink in the Loan Offices as the People can possibly spare, and as soon as possible. I think therefore you have judgd right of their Views. It would be an Act of Charity and a great Service to the publick if those who can afford to put their Money to Interest would ease their poorer fellow Citizens who are possessd of those Bills, by exchanging them for other Bills without a Discount. ”

“ At the adoption of the National Constitution, the people, to their wide-spread cost, had become familiar with bills of credit and their incidents, while all conversant with Colonial history must have known the part which bills of credit played for nearly a century, not only as a help to currency, but as a tender, constituting paper money. ”

“ But as California grew—and it grew very fast in a few years—there came a demand for a speedier method of communication between the Western frontier in the East and the Eastern frontier in the West. Those two thousand miles of waste land consumed a month or more when transportation was by means of bull trains. It did not matter very much with freight, but in the transportation of money, of letters, of business arrangements that time grew to be too long for advancing civilization. ”

“ In order to raise money by way of loans most easily and cheaply, it is clearly necessary to give every possible support to the public credit. To that end a uniform currency, in which taxes, subscriptions to loans, and all other ordinary public dues as well as all private dues may be paid, is almost if not quite indispensable. Such a currency can be furnished by banking associations organized under a general act of Congress, as suggested in my message at the beginning of the present session. ”

“ Danger and toil have always attended the explorers in finance, and they always will. Nevertheless the path is the way of civilization. The greater the development of civilized life, the larger will be the values in paper and credit."
The pathway to our present monetary standard is lined with the wrecks of different forms of currency, country pay, debased coinage of the Boston mint, credit bills of the Colony of Massachusetts, fiat money of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, legalized fiat money, inflated currency, land bank bills, silver notes, treasury notes, continental currency. ”