From 1865 to 1870, a crisis atmosphere hovered around the issue of the massive public debt created during the recently concluded Civil War, leading, in part, to the passage of a Constitutional Amendment ensuring the “validity of the public debt.” However, the Civil War debt crisis was not a...

Consumers are using cash less often. This is especially the case in high-value transactions. However, the $1 Federal Reserve Note continues to hold its ground in the realm of micropayments, transactions having a value of less than $5. Economists argue that the staying power of the $1 bill is...

This paper argues that changes in how the Treasury managed the public debt stemmed from changes in perceptions of Government debt. To make this argument, the paper looks at two big shifts in how the public debt was handled. One change was the Government’s printing of its own securities through...