U.S. Department of the Treasury
| U.S. Department of the Treasury | |
| |
| Founded | 1789 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
| Web site | https://home.treasury.gov |
The U.S. Department of the Treasury is the executive agency responsible for promoting economic prosperity and ensuring the financial security of the United States.
The Department is responsible for a wide range of activities such as advising the President on economic and financial issues, encouraging sustainable economic growth, and fostering improved governance in financial institutions.
The Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department is Janet Yellen.
The Department of the Treasury operates and maintains systems that are critical to the nation's financial infrastructure, such as the production of coin and currency, the disbursement of payments to the American public, revenue collection, and the borrowing of funds necessary to run the federal government. The Department works with other federal agencies, foreign governments, and international financial institutions to encourage global economic growth, raise standards of living, and to the extent possible, predict and prevent economic and financial crises.
The Treasury Department also performs a critical and far-reaching role in enhancing national security by implementing economic sanctions against foreign threats to the U.S., identifying and targeting the financial support networks of national security threats, and improving the safeguards of our financial systems.[1]
The Treasury also meets periodically with other global regulators to exchange views on topics of mutual interest as part of a financial regulatory dialogue. Participants in a U.S.-EU Joint Financial Regulatory Forum met virtually on March 24 and 25, 2021. The March 2021 forum focused on six themes: (1) next steps in the COVID-19 recovery and mitigating financial stability risks, (2) sustainable finance, (3) multilateral and bilateral engagement in banking and insurance, (4) regulatory and supervisory cooperation in the capital markets, (5) regulatory and supervisory developments regarding financial innovation, and (6) anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism issues. Highlighting key issues around the pandemic, the global regulators said they expected the United States and the European Union to experience strong recoveries, but added that continued cooperative international engagement is needed to mitigate financial stability risks as the COVID-19 crisis winds down. Additionally, forum participants discussed broader possible responses to climate-related financial risks.[2]
History[edit]
The Treasury Department was established by the first session of Congress in 1789. Its first Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, pushed for federal assumption of Revolutionary War debt, and was instrumental in the development of the first U.S. fiscal agent, the Bank of the United States.[3]
Services[edit]
The basic functions of the Department of the Treasury include:
- Managing federal finances;
- Collecting taxes, duties and monies paid to and due to the U.S. and paying all bills of the U.S.;
- Producing postage stamps, currency and coinage;
- Managing government accounts and the public debt;
- Supervising national banks and thrift institutions;
- Advising on domestic and international financial, monetary, economic, trade and tax policy;
- Enforcing federal finance and tax laws;
- Investigating and prosecuting tax evaders, counterfeiters and forgers.
VIDEO: What Does the Secretary of the Treasury Do?[edit]
Video from OnlineMBA.com[4]
Key People[edit]
- Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Treasury
- Wally Adeyemo, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury
References[edit]
- ↑ U.S. Treasury - Education: Duties & Functions. U.S. Treasury.
- ↑ Joint Statement on the U.S.-EU Joint Financial Regulatory Forum. U.S. Treasury.
- ↑ Hamilton and the Establishment of the Department of the Treasury. U.S. Treasury.
- ↑ What Does the Secretary of the Treasury Do?. OnlineMBA.com.