T. Wier wrote:
> Padraic Brown wrote:
>
> > >Equivalent, or actually the same? I looked up that fact, and the book
> > >said "Italian lira". This book has been known to be wrong before, but
> > >I had been under the impression that San Marino had signed a monetary
> > >union treaty with Italy, effectively making the Italian lira the same
currency
> > >as San Marino's official currency. Argentina, FWIW, had wanted to do
> > >the same with the US dollar some several months back.
> >
> > 1 San Marino lira = 1 Italian lira. So not really the same.
> >
> > Ecuador did exactly that. No more sucres; only dollars. Though I've
> > never gotten a clear answer as to what they'll do about dollar
> > fractions.
>
> No, what Ecuador did, and what Argentina and actually a goodly number
> of other countries have already done, is to use the US dollar as their
reserve
> currency, in exactly the same way as the US used to use gold bars. For
every
> Argentinian peso, there is exactly one US dollar in a vault somewhere.
They
> did this to "peg" their currency to the more stable US dollar, to avoid
the
> recurrent fear of hyperinflation that they have experienced in the past.
To do
> all this, they need not sign a treaty with the US; they need only declare
that the
> currency will not freely float on the open market. What I was referring
to about
> Argentina, though, was that they literally wanted to abolish the
Argentinian peso
> entirely, and use the US currency as the official currency. In doing
this, they would
> be effectively ceding a significant amount of sovereignty, because they
would not
> be able to value their currency to the needs of their economy. Greenspan
told
> them if they did this, they should not expect him to adjust US monetary
policy
> to help out their economy.
I know of this. My uncle is a missionary in Peru and I think they did the
same.
But we are talking of another thing. San Marino lira and Vatican lira are
*legally tied* to the doom of their Italian equivalent by bilateral traits.
These traits have been confirmed last year. In the new version of the trait
I'm sure some line was added to confirm the complete passage from any kind
of lira to euro. After all, why should they reatin the weak lira when they
could switch to the ... weak but international euro?
> So, that was what I was asking about San Marino. I had assumed that since
> San Marino is so very small, that they didn't even bother to print their
own
> currency, with "San Marino" printed on it and all, and then peg it to the
Italian
> lira. It seemed much easier for me to see them using Italian liras
outright.
>
> [BTW, is the Italian plural of "lira" "lire"?]
Yup.
Luca