[BRIEF NOTE] Loose change
Apr. 14th, 2008 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldMuch much earlier this morning, when I was sorting through my wallet in search of the change that I needed to buy my tea from Coffee Time, I found a Rhode Island quarter. I kept it--I've seen plenty of quarters from the United States, but this Rhode Island coin is the first I can remember seeing.
It's been of minor interest to me that, despite the non-existence of a North American monetary union, American and Canadian quarters have traditionally been interchangeable in vending machines and cash transactions and the like even though the Canadian and American dollars have only recently been practically on par. It's going to stay at this level. Even if the exchange rate remains constant, and if the United States converts its dollars from bills to coins, practical interchangeability almost certainly wouldn't exist. This is all for the good, since the best monetary unions--at least the ones that involve large amounts of currency--are the ones that are consciously created and managed.
That is true for the Eurozone. Euro coins are interchangeable throughout the Eurozone, but national editions of Euro coins are also produced. Since Euros are valid across the Eurozone, coins can easily migrate across national frontiers. Studies have been made of this migration and its patterns in studies done on the situations in France, Austria, and Luxembourg, and likely in other Eurozone countries. I wonder if anyone has made a similar study on regional patterns in the circulation of American coinage in Canada (and Canadian coinage in the United States, of course).
It's been of minor interest to me that, despite the non-existence of a North American monetary union, American and Canadian quarters have traditionally been interchangeable in vending machines and cash transactions and the like even though the Canadian and American dollars have only recently been practically on par. It's going to stay at this level. Even if the exchange rate remains constant, and if the United States converts its dollars from bills to coins, practical interchangeability almost certainly wouldn't exist. This is all for the good, since the best monetary unions--at least the ones that involve large amounts of currency--are the ones that are consciously created and managed.
That is true for the Eurozone. Euro coins are interchangeable throughout the Eurozone, but national editions of Euro coins are also produced. Since Euros are valid across the Eurozone, coins can easily migrate across national frontiers. Studies have been made of this migration and its patterns in studies done on the situations in France, Austria, and Luxembourg, and likely in other Eurozone countries. I wonder if anyone has made a similar study on regional patterns in the circulation of American coinage in Canada (and Canadian coinage in the United States, of course).
