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Economy and Finance

Economy and Finance

Legal tender money and commodity money

27 Aug 2023 Zinkpot 149
  1. Legal tender money is anything recognized by law as a means to settle a public or private debt or meet a financial obligation, including tax payments, contracts, and legal fines or damages.
  2. Legal tender laws effectively prohibit the use of anything other than existing legal tender in the economy as money.
  3. In India, coins and currency notes are legal tender. They have the legal sanction or backing of the government. 
  4. Being a legal tender means that the individual is bound to accept it in exchange for commodities and services. It cannot be refused in the settlement of payments of any kind. 
  5. This is not true in the case of chequable bank deposits, they are not legal tender. 
  6. A person can legally refuse to accept payment through cheques and he can insist on payment in cash. 
  7. Legal tender money may be limited or unlimited legal tender. Limited legal tender is the money that is accepted as legal tender only up to a certain maximum amount. It cannot be forced upon the people beyond that limit. In India, coins of small denominations are the only limited legal tender money. 
  8. On the other hand, unlimited legal tender is the money that a person has to accept without any maximum limit. In our country, currency notes of all denominations and higher denomination coins are unlimited legal tender. 
  9. Commodity money is money that is backed by a commodity that has intrinsic value. Intrinsic value denotes the value of a commodity even if it is not used as money. 
  10. Commodity money has four main characteristics: durable, divisible, easily exchangeable, and rare. 
  11. Gold, silver, copper, salt, seashells, tobacco, and alcohol are historical examples of commodity money. 
  12. The use of commodity money dates back between 700 and 500 BC when gold became a common form of exchange. 
  13. There are many supporters of commodity money who believe it is the best form of money and that we should return to it. It provides more flexibility for the money holder, more opportunities to get rich quickly, and more protection from economic inflation. A commodity money holder has several advantages: it can be used or spent. 
  14. But there are many limitations to it. Its face value is not consistent across all the regions, in general, the commodities used are perishable, they are typically heavy to transport, and there is no fungibility i.e. replacement by another identical item; mutual interchangeability. 
  15. Commodity money is no longer preferred because it lacks important monetary characteristics such as uniformity, homogeneity, standard size and weight, portability and divisibility. 
     

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