Money, money circulation and credit
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The evolution of money didn’t stop on this. We can distinguish the next stages of the cost’s forms development: the stage of transition to paper and credit money and then their phasing-out from the turnover as a result of what the electronic money appear.
Besides the mentioned above points of view the other metal and nominal theories (nominalism) in economics regarding money and their nature were expressed.
The metal theory identifies money with precious metals. The theory proves that money should certainly have an inmost value in order to perform its functions. The most significant followers of this theory were the mercantilists who considered that gold and silver are the money by their nature and in virtue of their natural features. This approach reflected the situation truly in whole for the systems with the full-bodied (commodity) money.
The nominalism identifies money by the symbols of value (signs), conventional payment units. The most important is not the metal content of money but their symbolism (nominal). First of all money are considered as the product of state power and legal relations when their purchasing power is determined by the State. In whole the nominal theory of money reflects the true nature of money in the modern economic systems.
There are a lot of approaches of money determination. For example they could be rendered as a special good which plays role of a universal equivalent. This description remains actual for the long term though in the modem economic literature we can meet the other descriptions which usually indicate the other separate functions or peculiarities of money.
Money – metal and/or paper are the standards of value during the purchase and sale deal which play role of a universal equivalent, i.e. they express the value of all of the goods and are exchanged on any of them. (Shorter Economics Dictionary / under the editorship of A.N. Azriliyan – M., 2000).
Paul A. Samuelson writes that the flow of money is the source of life power, money provide the measuring rod of value. Besides money act as a medium of exchange and as standard unit of value or account. (Paul A. Samuelson «Economics» – M., 1992 – T. 1., – p. 40, p. 47).
According to the evolutional theory we can give the following description of money: Money are the historically developing economic category which expresses the definite economic relations between people in the process of production and distribution.
The essence of money consists of their features:
The universal immediate exchangeability – the possibility to exchange money onto any items of value.
The independent form of exchanged value which is not connected directly with realization of goods. The most significant cases of money usage in this form are credit accommodation, loan indebtedness redemption, financing of various manufacturing and nonmanufacturing costs, etc.
The materialization of the universal labor time is that labor spent on the goods production creates their value which could be changed by means of money.
1.1.2. The functions of money
The generation of money and their usage led to the great consequences. Money generation allowed to overcome the narrow bounds of mutual exchange of separate producers by means of goods and to create conditions for market generation in the operations of which many owners of different goods can take part. It provided the further development of production and improvement of its effectiveness.
The fact of money usage has a considerable importance because thanks to which appeared an opportunity to separate a nonrecurrent process of the goods’ mutual exchange (G-G) on two asynchronically implemented processes:
– the first consists of the good sale (G-M);
– the second consists of the required good purchase in another time and in another place (M-G).
Whereby the usage of money is not implied as a representative in the goods exchange processes. By contrast the money functioning obtains features of an independent process: the commodity producers can save money got from the realization of their goods till the moment of required good purchase. Hence the money savings appeared which could be used as for the goods purchasing and for money loaning and for debts repayment.
As a result of such processes the money flow acquired an independent meaning and separated from the goods flow.
The money functioning got more independence after the full-bodied money substitution which had their own cost onto the monetary units and after the following fixed gold content of the monetary units cancellation. After that the money appeared without their own intrinsic value what allowed to emit the monetary units according to the turnover necessities regardless the gold guarantee availability.
Thanks to cashless settlements generation including payments made on electronic devices the independence of money enhanced widely.
From the great antiquity we can follow the proofs that money performed three basic functions:
1) the standard of value;
2) the instrument of circulation;
3) the store of value.
The first money function is the function of value standard or in simple words of unified product worth measurer for sellers and buyers. In order to define the value of any good it should be compared with some quantity of money. However it must be borne in mind that money don’t make goods comparable because the last are the products of human labor and have homogeneous base of comparison – abstract labor.
The value of good expressed in money is the price of good. The price or monetary commodity form, ideal form with only an idea. Only the good with a relative form of value can have a price. Money do not have price, their cost couldn’t be defined by the money themselves. Instead of price money have a purchasing power expressed in an absolute quantity of goods which could be purchased on them.
After money invention people could find them usage only because they made one more great invention: all the goods could be compared to each other on the basis of their relative value and the value itself could be expressed by means of unified measurer – money. For the commodity-money operations different monetary units are used – tenge, dollars, marks, etc. These units measure and compare value of commodities. This function of accounting money is called standard of prices.
Money as a standard of value is homogeneous what is very important for counting and record keeping of implemented transactions. Expressing prices in dollars and cents people can compare and equalize the value of different goods immediately and freely.
If one good costs 20 tenge and the other 10 then the relative value of these goods is evident. Let’s say that our economy system doesn’t have a standard of value. In this case instead of definite price expression of each good in tenge we would form proportions of exchange of each good and service on each other good. For different goods and services the quantity of possible combinations is quite great and the good’s price determination becomes quite difficult.