[BRIEF NOTE] A note about the impending (?) Euroization of the United States

This Reuters story has gotten quite a lot of coverage, in the light of the ongoing decline in the value of the American dollar.

In the latest example that the U.S. dollar just ain't what it used to be, some shops in New York City have begun accepting euros and other foreign currency as payment for merchandise.

"We had decided that money is money and we'll take it and just do the exchange whenever we can with our bank," Robert Chu, owner of East Village Wines, told Reuters television.

The increasingly weak U.S. dollar, once considered the king among currencies, has brought waves of European tourists to New York with money to burn and looking to take advantage of hugely favorable exchange rates.

"We didn't realize we would take so much in and there were that many people traveling or having euros to bring in. But some days, you'd be surprised at how many euros you get," Chu said.

"Now we have to get familiar with other currencies and the (British) pound and the Canadian dollars we take," he said.

An amusing news item? Perhaps, but people shouldn't really much more into it. Back in 1985 when Tina Turner was singing that she'd accept payment in either "Deutschmarks or dollars" for her private dances, there were only a bit more than 63 million people in West Germany versus a bit under 240 million in the United States. There might well have been quite a few West German visitors to wherever Turner was dancing, but it would have been unlikely that there would have been such a concentration that her wider community would accept Deutsche marks.

That was then. Now, the Eurozone has a population of 320 million people. Looking at Wikipedia's article on tourism in New York City, I found out that at least 1.57 million Eurozone tourists visited from Eurozone countries in 2005, compared to the 1.17 million Britons and a bit over eight hundred thousand Canadians who joined them. Visitors from the Eurozone easily form a plurality of New York City's international visitors. Why shouldn't New York City merchants accept the currency used by so many potential patrons? Judging by Canadian precedents, it's not like they'll have to take a financial hit from this decision.

Often by the cash register there'll be a sign reading U.S. CURRENCY __X%, offering a standard exchange rate. This percentage, say 25%, is the "premium" -- it means that for every U.S. greenback you hand over, the cashier will see it as $1.25 in Canadian dollars. Thus, for an $8 tab you need pay only $6 in U.S. bills. However, currency conversions at the till rarely provide the best rates of exchange, so it's best to shop around for the best rate, which is usually found in banks.

[LINK] "Speaking in tongues"

The Economist's Asia.view correspondent has produced an interesting article on language policy in Southeast Asia, "Speaking in tongues"

HAD he been president of Indonesia, not France, Charles de Gaulle might have modified his famous saying about cheeses and asked how to govern a nation with over 700 different languages. The answer, as elsewhere in South-East Asia, was to impose a “national” tongue.

As the region’s countries became independent, most wanted their citizenry to speak the same indigenous language. But choosing an acceptable candidate sometimes proved difficult, laying the ground for “language wars” that still rage.

A new collection of essays ["Language, Nation and Development in South-East Asia", edited by Lee Hock Guan and Leo Suryadinata]* from the Singapore-based Institute of South-East Asian Studies (ISEAS) reviews the region’s struggles to build monolingual nations. Several themes emerge: first, globalisation is forcing governments to reconsider restrictions on daily use of English; second, with the economic rise of China, governments increasingly see their ethnic-Chinese populations as assets rather than threats; and third, democratisation and decentralisation may revive local and tribal languages. Each of these trends may undermine the quest for a unifying national language.

The article introduces the casual reader to several interesting language planning issues in Southeast Asia, including the changing position of the Filipino language in the Philippines vis-à-vis English, the politically sensitive positions of minority languages in Thailand and Malaysia, and the complex language situation in East Timor, all against the background of a growing need for fluency in world languages like English and Chinese.

[FISKING] A brief look at Mitt Romney

I was so struck by the BBC report of the content of Mitt Romney's concession speech, delivered topday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, that I Googled the Associated Press-sanctioned speech transcript. It's interesting. After saying that "unless America changes course, we could become the France of the 21st century," he goes on to talk about Europe and population.

Europe -- Europe is facing a demographic disaster.

ROMNEY: That's the inevitable product of weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for the sanctity of human life, and eroded morality.

Some reason that culture is merely an accessory to America's vitality. We know that it's the source of our strength. And we will not be dissuaded by the snickers and knowing glances when we stand up for family values and morality and culture. We will...

(APPLAUSE)

Conservatives here and conservatives across the country will always be honored to stand on principle and to stand for principles.

1. The casual slam at France is unsurprising. It's equally unsurprising that a politically unified and internally integrated demi-continent of three hundred million people that has been spared the direct ravages of war could be more powerful than a country with a fifth the population and less than a tenth of the land area. Oh well. Maybe Romney's just bitter that he made two converts during his two-and-a-half years in France as a Mormon missionary.

2. The "China and India will dominate us" meme is amusing, given the United States' aforementioned size, its very significant economic lead in per capita terms over those two countries, and the meme's tacit assumption that economic growth in these two countries will continue in the high single digits for the next two decades. If. Anyway, all this assumes that anything can break the unstoppable dominance of the Japanese.

3. It's really annoying how so many conservatives have felt free to take the word "family" and limit it to only the sorts of families that they want. In any case, to the extent that there are demographic issues in Europe, countries like Italy where traditional families are strong aren't faring nearly as well as countries like France where, at latest report, 43% of children are born out of wedlock.

I could go into more detail, but I won't bother. Why should I devote more time to political losers if I have better things to do?

[BRIEF NOTE] Changing Asian economic balances

Continuing the theme of international disparities on growth, come across a recent post by james_nicoll, ("The Benefits of Colonialism") presenting data on economic growth in four Asian countries taken from Angus Maddison's study The World Economy. This study is available through Google Books, and the data below is taken from the tables on page 217.

GDP per capita growth per cent in four Asian countries (1800-2000)

Country	1820-1870	1870-1913	1913-1950	1950-1973	1973-1998
China	-0.25	0.10	-0.62	2.86	5.39
India	0.00	0.54	-0.22	1.40	2.91
Indonesia	0.13	0.75	-0.20	2.57	2.90
Japan	0.19	1.48	0.89	8.05	2.34

With caveats--India was still partly uncolonized in the first half of the 19th century and the First Opium War took place towards the end of the 1800-1850 period--the contrasts in economic growth rates in China, India, and Indonesia during and after their domination by foreigners are striking. In Nicoll's words, "[e]ven taking into account that the US bombed Japan flat during WWII, the Japanese still outperform India under the Raj, Indonesia under the Dutch and China during the unpleasantnesses of the first half of the 20th century."