The money of the American Constitution

The US dollar is not what most people think it is. There are a constitutional dollar (C$) and a Federal Reserve dollar (F$). The former is money; the latter is a money-substitute circulating in place of money. They are fundamentally distinct with different definitions. Many modern economists struggle to define money. Often beginning with an historical overview of the concept of moneyness, they generally end by describing the functions of money. What money ‘does’ is not a definition of what money ‘is’. Throughout history, money has always been defined as a specific weight of gold or silver. In colonial America...