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To: bill1952

That only happens when they attempt to violate Gresham’s Law.

“Bad money pushes out good money.” when there are two currencies of different value, people spend the one worth less and save the one worth more.

That is, you get such things when you have two currencies of different values, which is why in this case you have a controlled exchange rate.

At first, Greeks would want Euros instead of Drachmas. But Euros would have limited value in Greece, since they could not be exchanged at banks, nor used by major retail stores. But outside of Greece, a Euro would just be a Euro, and a Greek who bought a lot of goods outside of Greece and wanted to bring it back in would be halted by ordinary customs controls.

And Drachmas would be worthless outside of Greece, unless exchanged for Euros at the going rate.

And all the while, mind you, there would be efforts to create parity of the two currencies.

This is also where it matters that Euros are a fiat currency, but Drachmas would be a reserve currency. This would tend to make Drachmas worth *more* than Euros.

Certainly there would be some black market, but the effort is to make the profit margin for such activities so small that it’s not worth it.


22 posted on 05/18/2012 6:25:11 PM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy
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To: yefragetuwrabrumuy
During the Cold War, the Eastern European currencies were not convertible with "hard currency" from the West. I visited Hungary during that period--you were required to convert a certain amount of money to the local currency but I think you basically had to spend it or you were left with some worthless pieces of paper (I was there on a Sunday so almost nothing was open). The train station had one place for changing money if you had hard currency and another place if you were coming from one of the other satellite countries.

I was in Greece last year but managed to avoid the riots. It could be a lot worse this year--I don't think I would want to visit the country. Tourists from other countries may be wondering how safe it will be. Maybe it will be OK in the small towns.

27 posted on 05/18/2012 8:29:20 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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