DailyDirt: In Money, We Trust (Sometimes)

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Money is an interesting concept. Government institutions create a supply of money and try to control the value of it within some acceptable ranges. But when the value of money goes out of control, the solutions for getting it stabilized seem a bit illogical. Still, if you can get enough people to switch their faith from one money to another, it seems to work. Here are a few more stories on the topic of money and currency.

• It's intriguingly difficult for any country that currently uses the euro to try to stop using it and switch to some other form of currency. So difficult, in fact, there's a $400,000 prize for anyone who can figure out a process that would actually work and not create monetary chaos. [url]
• Some Brazilians are using locally-printed currencies instead of its national reais -- such as the capivari, which is just one of the 63 local kinds of money. The capivari is a printed bill (with a picture of a rodent on it!), equal in value to the reai, but retailers give customers discounts for using capivaris (making these local bills into fancy coupons, essentially). [url]
• Last year, the IMF's Dominique Strauss-Kahn proposed an alternative to the dollar in central banks' foreign currency reserves. A system of special drawing rights (SDRs) for central banks would be priced according to international trade instead of any single nation's currency. (It's not an entirely new idea, but it's never caught on.) [url]
• In Vietnam, there's a penalty for posting prices in dollars instead of the local currency. The local currency suffers from high inflation rates, so they might want to look into Brazil's monetary history for some lessons.... [url]
• To discover more stuff on economics, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

As always, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: brazil, capivari, currency, dollar, dong, euro, money, real, sdrs, vietnam
Companies: imf