Re: New(ish)
- From: "athel...@yahoo" <athel_cb@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 27 Apr 2006 06:23:01 -0700
I'm reminded of a moment about 15 years ago when I had to cash a cheque
in a bank in Montevideo. (The bank was built in very splendid style at
during the period when Uruguay was extremely prosperous; if the Taj
Mahal had been next door it would have looked rather humble by
comparison.) There was a large notice that said something along the
lines of the following: "in documents in this bank 'pesos' refer to new
new pesos issued after 1992; 1 'new peso', issued between 1985 and
1992 is equal 0.001 peso or to 1000 'old pesos'." Actually I think it
was a lot more complicated and difficult to understand than that, but
after 15 years it's the best I can do. (The years I've put are guesses;
I certainly don't remember the real years in which the new pesos were
introduced.)
The problem raised by the original poster is one that comes up quite
often in countries with hyperinflation. (Fortunately there hasn't been
enough inflation in the UK since 1971 to demand a new new penny yet.)
In most places the solution is as clumsy as as it was in Uruguay, but
in Chile, for example, they change the name of the unit: when the peso
becomes too small they introduce an escudo equal to 1000 pesos, and
when the escudo becomes too small they introduce a peso equal to 1000
escudos. The present peso has been around for a long time now (since
around 1975).
In France, however, even people born after 1958 often used to mean old
francs when they talked about 'francs'. Very confusing for the poor
foreigner. When they wanted to be really clear (but didn't succeed, at
least so far as foreigners were concerned) they would say "centimes" to
mean old francs, so that the value of a house, for example, might
easily be expressed as "one hundred million centimes". Fortunately all
that nonsense has largely disappeared with the introduction of the
euro, though it's still quite common for people to "helpfully"
translate prices into francs.
--
athel
http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/homepage.htm
.
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