The USA is a monetary union, as was the
late USSR.
All single currencies encountered opposition on both ideological and
pragmatic grounds when they were first introduced.
The American constitution, for instance, did not provide for a central
bank. Many of the Founding Fathers (e.g., Madison and Jefferson)
refused to countenance one. It took the nascent USA two decades to come
up with a semblance of a central monetary institution in 1791. It was
modeled after the successful Bank of England. When Madison became
President, he purposefully let its concession expire in 1811. In the
forthcoming half century, it revived (for instance, in 1816) and
expired a few times.
The United States became a monetary union only following its traumatic
Civil War. Similarly, Europe's monetary union is a belated outcome of
two European civil wars (the two World Wars). America instituted bank
regulation and supervision only in 1863 and, for the first time, banks
were classified as either national or state-level.
This classification was necessary because by the end of the Civil War,
notes - legal and illegal tender - were being issued by no less than
1562 private banks - up from only 25 in 1800. A similar process
occurred in the principalities which were later to constitute Germany.
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