Betcha didn't know this: Only a few months after Congress created the dollar, the government defaulted on the new currency. Happened in 1862. Five months after what was then called the "Greenback" was created in 1861, President Lincoln's Treasury Department failed to redeem them in January, 1862. As the Ludwig von Mises Institute's John S. Chamberlin explains, that led to a fundamental change in approach: Read More