货币(money)
一种人们普遍接受作为经济交换手段的商品。它能表示价格和价值；它在人与人、国与国之间流通从而便利贸易。历史上，很多商品曾被用作货币，包括贝壳、小珠、石板、牲畜等，但自17世纪起，最普通的形式是硬币、纸币和记帐。标准的经济理论认为，货币有四种明显的功能︰用以作为交换媒介，在商品交换和服务中普遍为人们所接受；用作衡量价值、记帐单位、实行价格制度、计算成本、利润和亏损的一般标准；用作延期付款、放款和日後交易的计算单位；用作财富的储存，是将不即时花费的收入保持下来的方便方法。金属，特别是金和银，用作货币至少有4,000年历史，作为金属货币流通的标准铸币也有2,600年的历史。18世纪末和19世纪初，银行开始发行可换回金银的纸币，成为工业经济中主要的货币。第一次世界大战中和自1930年代开始的大萧条时期，许多国家放弃金本位制。对多数个人来说，货币包括铸币、纸币和银行存款。就经济来说，总的货币供给比个人拥有货币金额定总和要大几倍，这是因为存在金融机构的存款中大部分被贷放出去，这就是加大货币总供应量好几倍。亦请参阅soft money。
English version：
money
Commodity accepted by general consent as a medium of economic exchange. It is the medium in which prices and values are expressed; it circulates from person to person and country to country, thus facilitating trade. Throughout history various commodities have been used as money, including seashells, beads, and cattle, but since the 17th century the most common forms have been metal coins, paper notes, and bookkeeping entries. In standard economic theory, money is held to have four functions: to serve as a medium of exchange universally accepted in return for goods and services; to act as a measure of value, making possible the operation of the price system and the calculation of cost, profit, and loss; to serve as a standard of deferred payments, the unit in which loans are made and future transactions are fixed; and to provide a means of storing wealth not immediately required for use. Metals, especially gold and silver, have been used for money for at least 4,000 years; standardized coins have been minted for perhaps 2,600 years. In the late 18th and early 19th century, banks began to issue notes redeemable in gold or silver, which became the principal money of industrial economies. Temporarily during World War I and permanently from the 1930s, most nations abandoned the gold standard. To most individuals today, money consists of coins, notes, and bank deposits. In terms of the economy, however, the total money supply is several times as large as the sum total of individual money holdings so defined, since most of the deposits placed in banks are loaned out, thus multiplying the money supply several times over. See also soft money.
