Continental Currency, One Sixth of a Dollar
Due to wartime inflation of bills of credit (“Continentals”) during the American war for independence and the predictable economic effects, an old American colloquialism developed, “not worth a Continental” (although this phrase may have come about much later than the Revolutionary era). This article argues that Continentals only temporarily retained some value largely because of an initial promise of future redemption in gold and silver – a monetary “bait-and-switch.” (Additionally, interventions such as legal tender laws and the acceptance of paper money for tax payments may have offered some temporary support, but these measures were secondary to – and ultimately dependent upon – the original expectation of redemption in gold or silver).
This poses a significant problem for Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Rather than demonstrating chartalism or a state’s ability to impose money on a people via a combination of legal tender laws and acceptance of their tokens in tax settlement, it demonstrates that the Continentals were only perceived as valuable because they were linked to gold and silver and carried explicit promises of future redemption in specie and were burned to avoid other problems. Continue reading
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