專欄匯率

A currency is anything that two people agree is a currency

Loyal readers of this column, if there are any, will know that a few weeks ago I was in the Galápagos Islands, part of Ecuador. As is inevitable, I came back with a handful of small change. There is a US dollar coin, and another coin that simply states on its face “fifty cents”.

The 50 cent coin is minted for the government of Ecuador, but there is no Ecuadorean currency, and the cents referred to are therefore not Ecuadorean cents. Ecuador is the largest country in the world to have chosen the route commonly known as “dollarisation”.

A decade ago, its government made a unilateral decision to adopt the currency of another country: it uses the US dollar with the acquiescence, though not the agreement, of the American government and Federal Reserve. The coin in my pocket represents 50 US cents, but the US does not issue 50 cent coins, only quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies. While everyone in the Galápagos or the national capital Quito would accept my 50 cent coin, no one in Washington would. Curiously, genuine dollar coins, minted for the US Treasury, have not proved popular in the US but are widely circulated in Ecuador.

您已閱讀26%(1138字),剩餘74%(3162字)包含更多重要資訊,訂閱以繼續探索完整內容,並享受更多專屬服務。
版權聲明:本文版權歸FT中文網所有,未經允許任何單位或個人不得轉載,複製或以任何其他方式使用本文全部或部分,侵權必究。

約翰•凱

約翰•凱(John Kay)從1995年開始爲英國《金融時報》撰寫經濟和商業的專欄。他曾經任教於倫敦商學院和牛津大學。目前他在倫敦經濟學院擔任訪問學者。他有著非常輝煌的從商經歷,曾經創辦和壯大了一家諮詢公司,然後將其轉售。約翰•凱著述甚豐,其中包括《企業成功的基礎》(Foundations of Corporate Success, 1993)、《市場的真相》(The Truth about Markets, 2003)和近期的《金融投資指南》(The Long and the Short of It: finance and investment for normally intelligent people who are not in the industry)。

相關文章

相關話題

設置字型大小×
最小
較小
默認
較大
最大
分享×