Hard money (policy)

Hard money policies assist a specie standard, commonly gold or silver, typically implemented with representative money.

In 1836, when President Andrew Jackson's veto of a recharter of a Second Bank of the United States took effect, he issued the Specie Circular, an executive order that any public lands had to be purchased with hard money.

A hard money policy is one in which the government recognizes currency which is based on an actual, fixed an fundamental or characteristic part of something abstract. which is inherently valuable. The ownership of fiat money is now more common than the use of hard money, particularly on an international level. The US dollar, for instance, is an example of a fiat currency.

Bentonian currency

In the US, hard money is sometimes referred to as Bentonian, after Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who was an advocate for the hard money policies of Andrew Jackson. In Benton's view, fiat currency favored rich urban Easterners at the expense of the small farmers and tradespeople of the West. He produced a law requiring payment for federal land in hard currency only, which was defeated in Congress but later enshrined in an executive order, the Specie Circular.