Is there a country that uses the term “dollar” for currency without also using “cents” as fractional monetary units?
"Going through the list of economies that currently use the dollar, all of them list cents as a fractional unit. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, the 1/100 fractional unit is still called a cent, but it's no longer in circulation in coin form and only finds use in financial markets or electronic payments.  In countries like Malaysia, the word ""sen"" is used as the translation of the word ""cent"", even though the word for the actual currency, ""ringgit"", isn't a translation of the word ""dollar"".  A similar situation occurs in Panama. The local currency is called the balboa, and it's priced on par (1:1) with the US dollar. US banknotes are also accepted as legal tender, and Panamanians sometimes use the terms balboa/dollar interchangeably. The 1/100 subdivision of the balboa is the centésimo, which is merely a translation of cent. Like Malaysia, the fractional unit is called ""cent"" (or a translation) but the main unit isn't merely a translation of the word ""dollar."" On a historical note, the Spanish Dollar was subdivided into 8 reales in order to match the German thaler (the word that forms the basis for the English word ""dollar"")." "Wikipedia has a nice list of currencies that use ""cents"" and currencies that use 1/100th division that is not called ""cent"". Cent means ""100"" in Latin (and French, and probably all the Roman family of languages), so if the currency is divided by 100 subunits - it will likely to be called ""cent"" or something similar in the local language. The list of currencies (on the same page) where it is not the case is significantly shorter, and includes countries with relatively ancient currency units that were invented before the introduction of the decimal system (even though now they are in fact decimal they still kept the old names, like the British ""pence"" or the Russian ""kopek""). The point is that ""Dollar"" and ""cent"" are not directly related, many currencies that are not called ""Dollar"" are using cents as well (Euro, among others). It just means ""1/100th"", and it is safe to assume that most (if not all) of the modern currencies are divided into 1/100th."
"I think the important fact here is that all of our currencies are Fiat Currencies. So currency technically means nothing, because (as you mentioned) the country could print more any time it wants. Now what makes it useful is the combination of two big things: So I would say, we know they owe us 100 ""dollars"", and the dollar is just a word we use to represent value. It is not technically worth anything, beyond the fact that the government controls the amount of that currency in circulation and you trust that people still want more of that currency." How can I calculate my currency risk exposure?  You own securities that are priced in dollars, so your currency risk is the amount (all else being equal) that your portfolio drops if the dollar depreciates relative to the Euro between now and the time that you plan to cash out your investments. Not all stocks, though, have a high correlation relative to the dollar.  Many US companies (e.g. Apple) do a lot of business in foreign countries and do not necessarily move in line with the Dollar.  Calculate the correlation (using Excel or other statistical programs) between the returns of your portfolio and the change in FX rate between the Dollar and Euro to see how well your portfolio correlated with that FX rate.  That would tell you how much risk you need to mitigate. how can I hedge against it?  There are various Currency ETFs that will track the USD/EUR exchange rate, so one option could be to buy some of those to offset your currency risk calculated above.  Note that ETFs do have fees associated with them, although they should be fairly small (one I looked at had a 0.4% fee, which isn't terrible but isn't nothing). Also note that there are ETFs that employ currency risk mitigation internally - including one on the Nasdaq 100 .   Note that this is NOT a recommendation for this ETF - just letting you know about alternative products that MIGHT meet your needs. "This is kind of halfway between the stuff I was talking about, and halfway to the stuff I don't want to get into. But it raises some very legitimate and relevant points that are kind of separate from the ""gold standard"" debate.   The big question, taking the banks out of it, is a two-fold one, that goes something like this:   - Is it possible to have a modern economy without credit-markets? and...  - Is it possible to have functional credit-markets without some sort of fractional-reserve currency?  For example, let's say Toyota decides to design a new car. Before they can sell a single unit, someone in Africa or somewhere has to dig up the minerals to make it, someone has to design it, tools have to be re-worked, all that kind of stuff. Building ONE CAR of a new design might cost [a billion dollars or more](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexus_LS).   Obviously it's not realistic for Toyota to expect the first customer to pay that much: they amortize the design and tooling costs over the expected production run or whatever. Moreover, we might say that only companies that have amassed a billion dollars in physical gold from previous sales should be *able* to do that kind of thing...  But there is a relevant question of whether this makes any kind of sense. Should Toyota have to literally ship palettes or dufflebags of physical gold through middlemen and suppliers to the miner in Africa, down to the actual guy who digs up the aluminum or whatever, in order to make this transaction happen?   How would that work, without some sort of intermediary ""promises""?   I'm imagining a scenario where Toyota sends an armored truck full of gold out to go find half-a-ton of aluminum. The drivers cannot rely on any promises or ""fractional reserve"", they must only trade the physical gold in their truck for actual aluminum or expenses along the way...   This starts to defy sanity, in a modern economy. You have to rely on the promises of middle-men and suppliers and contractors and so on. And the instant you have promises, you have fractional reserves, because people are getting paid and money is changing hands that hasn't been minted yet.   It's not just the impracticality of your local supermarket having to trade a bag full of gold for a shipment of lettuce, it's that contracts to purchase would be meaningless, because the driver would have had to give a smaller bag of gold to the supplier, who gave a smaller bag of gold to the grower, and so on... moreover, the supermarket would have to just wait to see what entrepreneurial driver shows up and what they have.   The supermarket obviously cannot ""order"" a hundred heads of lettuce per week with a promise to pay, not unless we also give the supplier permission to order a hundred heads of lettuce a week from the grower, and the grower permission to order seed and hire workers sufficient to grow a hundred heads of lettuce a week, and the workers permission to set up car-payments to get to work, and the seed-supplier to so on and so on...  That sequence of promises is ipso-facto a ""fractional reserve"" system, with or without a central bank. People are promising to deliver gold/cash/whatever that they don't currently have. Moreover, it is entirely possible in a gold-denominated currency for everyone to *keep* those promises, since the gold, like any currency, just keeps changing hands and cycling through the economy.   Your example of ""gold certificates"" is exactly equivalent to privately-arranged contracts/promises to produce a certain amount of gold on completion. It's promises all the way down, unless we insist on instant cash-transactions, e.g., literally handing an employee a dollar's worth of gold every five minutes, or whatever. If the employee is counting on the good-faith of the employer to settle up at the end of the day or week, then we have a fractional-reserve system whether decreed or not.   When you buy an iPhone or a laptop, someone had to dig up the stuff to make it, out of the ground. When you buy a cheeseburger, someone had to grow wheat and someone else had to raise and kill a cow. It's not a reasonable proposition that they should wait for you to show up with a bag of gold before doing those things, in this day and age.   We trade in promises and IOUs. Sometimes that backfires, sometimes catastrophically. But it's remarkable how well it *does* work, most of the time, and how much better it works than the times and places where people had to trade physical goods for physical goods.   This is not an argument against a gold-backed currency." Currently many countries (and non-government bodies) hold dollars to facilitate trade. If the dollar is no longer used in their trade, then they no longer have a reason to hold those dollars. If every other country starts to dump their dollar holdings into the world currency markets, the number of dollars floating around in those market would shoot up. The massive supply increase of dollars (we're assuming these other countries are holding massive amounts of dollars) would lead to a large drop in value of the dollar - lots more dollars chasing the same amount of goods. Every purchase will become much more expensive for anyone still buying with dollars, including the American government trying to buy expensive military equipment - unless the US government also switches to using something else to purchase military supplies. The Federal Reserve is a Government Corporation. They profit off of selling currency to everyone, they literally get paid to print money. It could cost them 14 cents for a dollar. This huge profit margins is why they dont mind making the penny. Other countries got rid of small currencies bc it costs the government not a corporation. "Amount is the closest single word.  ""Amount in dollars"" would be the easiest way to specify information you are requesting.  ""Amount and currency"" if you ware in an area using multiple currencies.  An accountant might be able to give you a more technical term, but it would be accountancy jargon.  Amount due, credit amount, debit amount, amount deposited, amount credited, amount withdrawn, or amount included.  If you're writing instructions and want to specify that the person following the instructions needs to indicate the currency, you'll probably have to simply state that requirement.   Based on US centric thinking, inside the US, money is dollars, dollars is money.  For US citizens outside the country, we would always tack on the currency.  100 dollars, or 100 Euro.  There is a segment of Americans who do not understand geography, and that other countries exist, and that they use different currencies, might not realize that other countries have currencies named dollars, and that USD means US Dollars.  So for U.S. citizens, be specific and clear. Bottom line, if this is written for US residents, and they need to specify the currency, you need to explicitly require them to ""List the amount and currency.""" The EU's situation is nothing like the United States.  The core problem there is a monetary union without a fiscal union.  All the member countries were bound to a currency they had no control over, despite the health and resources of their economies. For the US government, they've just credited Person B with a Million USD and haven't gained anything (afterall, those digits are intangible and don't really have a value, IMO). Two flaws in this reasoning: The US government didn't do anything. The receiving bank credited the recipient. If the digits are intangible, such that they haven't gained anything, they haven't lost anything either. In practice, the role of governments in the transfer is purely supervisory. The sending bank debits the sender's account and the receiving bank credits the recipient's account. Every intermediary makes some money on this transaction because the cost to the sender exceeds the credit to the recipient. The sending bank typically receives a credit to their account at a correspondent bank. The receiving bank typically receives a debit from their account at a correspondent bank. If a bank sends lots of money, eventually its account at its correspondent will run dry. If a bank receives lots of money, eventually its account at its correspondent will have too much money. This is resolved with domestic payments, sometimes handled by governmental or quasi-governmental agencies. In the US, banks have an account with the federal reserve and adjust balances there. The international component is handled by the correspondent bank(s). They also internally will credit and debit. If they get an imbalance between two currencies they can't easily correct, they will have to sell one currency to buy the other. Fortunately, worldwide currency exchange is extremely efficient.