The head honcho. The cash cattleman. The policy player. The Treasury Secretary.
In the U.S., the Treasury Secretary is the head of the U.S. Department of the Treasury (so no, not "just" a secretary). The Treasury Secretary is a Prez cabinet member, and fifth in line for the U.S. presidency.
The Treasury is where monetary policy and fiscal policy meet...where the money is put into the U.S. bank account from tax revenue (thanks for collecting, IRS), and where the money is taken out to buy things. It’s a really, really big bank account. The actual job of the Treasury Secretary though is mostly fiscal; monetary policy is mainly the responsibility of the Federal Reserve (the U.S. central bank).
In addition to handling all that cash-money and occasionally brushing shoulders with the independent Fed, the Treasury Secretary acts as a presidential advisor on everything money: domestic and international squabbles, tax policy...you name it. It governs Treasury securities as well.
For those who haven’t seen Hamilton (yet), Alexander Hamilton was the first Treasury Secretary. Spoiler alert.
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Finance: What are Government Bonds?52 Views
finance a la shmoop. what are government bonds?
now we're gonna narrow this question a bit and declare these bonds to be US [hands shape the question]
government bonds. our answer would be a tad different if we were discussing
bonds backed by North Korea Nigeria or Egypt so US government bonds come in a
few flavours. generally speaking they range in duration that is how long it
takes for them to mature and the principal get paid off. short-term US
government paper it's a fancy term for a bond ,refers to things that come due in a
year or less. that's short-term. year or less. and then there are Treasury bills
which come in a variety of durations and our price like this note how different
these look versus just you know buying a bond .but when you buy a bond it has a [chart shows prices]
face amount of say a thousand bucks for what is called its par value. that piece
of paper might agree that clown shoes incorporated which is where most
congressmen get their Footwear of course, will pay 30 bucks twice a year to the
holder for 10 years, and then pay back the original thousand bucks invested
it's like a normal vanilla bond, the interest rate here in this case is 6%
per year, but many US government notes are sold at auction which means they
sell at a discount to their par value. well regardless of how they're sold US [auction with a clown in attendance]
government bonds are backed by what is generally perceived in the world as the
most certain or secure financial backing. even more powerful than Google .if sorry
Larry and Sergey we're just keeping it real. the bonds are backed specifically
by the US government's right to tax its citizens. and oh they tax us. do they ever.
so now you can stop wondering about that bottomless hole a third or more of every
paycheck vanishes into. [portion of paycheck flies down dark hole in the ground]
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