Talk:Currency

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Wouldn't it be better if the currency codes appeared in parentheses after each country name in the first table? --Pinkunicorn


The history section of this page is desparately in need of a re-write. It is misleading, garbled and ummm.... {bites tongue}. I have no time to fix it right now. Perhaps someone else could have a go . Octothorn 07:31 22 May 2003 (UTC)

With the advent of the Euro, the Lira, Peseta, and other European currency signs now belong in the history section.

Why is the Tanzanian shilling not included in the list? -> because this came about as Tanzania departed from the East African common currency in 1965? Until then, Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika/Tanzania used the same currency: East African Shilling. This was at the time bound to GBP. Khflottorp 22:25, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

It is erroneous to imply the ISO 4217 obsoletes national currency symbols; that is not its purpose. It should, however, be considered to obsolete previous ad-hoc symbols for distinguishing national currencies with the same symbol, particularly the many dollars (e.g., CDN$, A$, NZ$, etc.). 18.24.0.120 04:11, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Which is the proper format, to capitalize or not capitalize the currency name? For example, we have Australian dollar, but Mexican Peso Nik42 19:49, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Never mind, I fixed it. I noticed that the ones like Mexican Peso were redirects to the non-capitalized versions Nik42 02:32, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Some sections, like Privately-issued currencies are repeated.

 This should be fixed.

Contents

[edit] Crowns

If krona/krone are to be merged (which I support), then the Czech koruna and Estonian kroon should also join the family. Jpatokal 13:57, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

disagree as this edit looses information, ie what currency applies to which country (and v.v.). Yes they are a 'family' of Crowns but the individual names and relevance (ie country of origin) must be retained across that edit - the primary point of having a reference work like WP imho! List them in a tree, but don't 'merge'. --Vamp:Willow 15:24, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Huh? I'm not proposing that country names be removed, I'm proposing that we move all the crowns under the same heading, and then list the exact name and country under the heading. Jpatokal 03:21, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Deletet some repeated text

I just removed some text that was repeated:

A currency is a unit of exchange, facilitating the transfer of goods and services. It is a form of money, where money is defined as a medium of exchange rather than e.g. a store of value. A currency zone is a country or region in which a specific currency is the dominant medium of exchange. To facilitate trade between currency zones, there are exchange rates i.e. prices at which currencies (and the goods and services of individual currency zones) can be exchanged against each other. Modern currencies can be classified as either floating currencies or fixed currencies based on their exchange rate regime.

Typically, each country has given monopoly to a single currency, controlled by a state owned central bank, although exceptions to this rule exist. Several countries can use the same name, each for their own currency (e.g. Canadian dollars and US dollars), several countries can use the same currency (e.g. the euro), or a country can declare the currency of another country to be legal tender (e.g. Panama and El Salvador have declared US currency to be legal tender).

Each currency typically has one fractional currency, often valued at 1/100 of the main currency: 100 cents = 1 dollar, 100 centimes = 1 franc. Units of 1/10 or 1/1000 are also common, but some currencies do not have any smaller units. Mauritania and Madagascar are the only remaining countries that do not use the decimal system; instead, the Mauritanian ouguiya is divided into 5 khoum, while the Malegasy ariary is divided into 5 iraimbilanja. However, due to inflation, both fractional units have in practice fallen into disuse.

was repeated under:

The Paper Money Era

[edit] Independence vs. Private Corporation

To preempt a revert war, I think we should settle whether the Fed is an independent agency or a private corporation. The case law cited refers to Tort liablity rather than monetary independence. The relevant staute stating that Congress can dissolve Fed Reserve is here: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/12/usc_sec_12_00000341----000-.html. The text: "To have succession after February 25, 1927, until dissolved by Act of Congress or until forfeiture of franchise for violation of law."

In an article on currency, the relevant axis on analysis is monetary policy. The Fed's power in this area is clearly given by Congress, and what Congress gives, it can take away. The Fed's status as a private corporation in regards to Tort law is much less relevant in a currency article.

Also, we don't want to bog down on the US Fed's status in the intro paragraphs that should give general overview to all users from all countries. No US-only focus. Feco 03:06, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Further, refer to Federal_Reserve#Who_owns_the_Federal_Reserve on this. Discussion about the Fed's status belongs on the Fed' wiki page to begin with.

I'll also refrain that a court ruling about tort liablity of Federal government for the Federal Reserve's actions DOES NOT apply to monetary policy. Feco 03:46, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)


Governments don't rule central banks, central banks rule governments. If you want to just give the "public relations" perspective on things then remove my editings and replace them with a link to the FED's website. But if you want to provide something which accurately depicts the reality of currency, what it is and how it functions in society and how it is manipulated in ways not beneficial to citizenry of soverign nations, then at the very least you it should just MENTION that ultimate *OWNERSHIP* of central bank *SHARES* lie with *PRIVATE* entities (namely the banking families of Europe who have been around for quite some time now).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Federal_Reserve


Yes, the criticism article is linked to from the Fed wiki article. It is NOT linked to from the Currency article, because there is no place for it here. The generic overview of monetary authority and how it relates to currency is sufficient. People looking for more in-depth research will go to the Fed article.

FYI- in the US, shares of Fed Reserve branches are held by member banks. This is by law. The shares are non-tradable, carry no voting authorty, and pay a paltry dividend (which is partial compensation for the fact that Fed pays no interest on member banks' deposits). The "owners" of CBanks have no authority over the exercise of monetary policy, since the authority to exercise policy is explicitly granted to monetary authorites by legislative bodies. That authority can easily be revoked if the Bank oversteps its bounds (say, by promoting the interest of its shadowy 'owners').

Per your post above, I'm going to "just give the PR perspective" and revert your edits. Feco 18:25, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] canadian money

[edit] List

I think the list of currencies should be removed, since there is the list of circulating currencies article. Zntrip 20:32, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I came to the talk page to make the same point. Since no one has commented, I'll make the change. Mom2jandk 03:07, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
There is information in the list of currencies I have just reinstated on this page that is not in the separate list of circulating currencies page. This information is also easier to find on the currency page. Lack of comments to the contrary cannot be taken as consent.
Dove1950 13:39, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I just thought that if the List of circulating currencies is outsourced, then the List of historic currencies should be, too. Generally, I'm not opposed to keeping it in the article here. ナイトスタリオン ✉ 14:02, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
I would agree that it's either both lists here or neither. My vote's for both staying put, especially after the work done to tidy them up, for which thanks are due.
Dove1950 17:08, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
I didn't mean to step on any toes. My thought was that if (basically) the same list was in two places at once, it would be likely that at some point the lists would be inconsistent. I see that they are organized differently. Perhaps though, it would be helpful to put a link to List of circulating currencies on this page with a description of how they're different? Mom2jandk 21:42, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
No harm done, I'm sure. Yeah, that should work; after all, the lists here are organized by the currencies' names, while the list at List of circulating currencies is organized by country. Oh, and thanks for the thanks, Dove. Thanks to you, too. ;) ナイトスタリオン ✉ 13:53, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

What about pulling the lists out as separate list pages? It seems more appropriate to me to not have a list embedded in a page. I'm sure there are users who don't know that these lists exists because they haven't read the currency page. The lists could be named "List of circulating currencies by denomination" and "<same> by country" and "List of historical currencies" or "List of obsolete currencies". I also believe that List of circulating currencies should be renamed to "List of circulating currencies" since the current name seems to imply that it's a complete list. I have brought this up at talk:List of circulating currencies#rename? if you care to comment. It came up because I'd like to create a complete list containing current and historical and I'd like to call it "List of currencies". I'm not going to actually do anything this time without talking first though :) Mom2jandk 21:40, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it would be nice to have such a list but this probably ought to augment rather than replace what we already have, which I consider to be fairly user friendly.
Dove1950 15:23, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I just updated the links in everyone's comments to point to List of circulating currencies instead of List of currencies. For now, there's a redirect, but I intend to put up a new List of currencies article which contains circulating and historic currencies soon. Ingrid 05:32, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] German Mark

We have a problem here, clearly. There are at least five different German marks: the original (split in Wikipedia into Gold mark and Papiermark), the Rentenmark, the Reichsmark, the Deutsche Mark and the East German mark (originally also called the Deutsche Mark). I conceed that, on the currency, Deutsche Mark is written as two words. The problem is that an article entitled "German mark" should deal either with the original mark only (since this was the only one actually called "mark") or with all these separate currencies. The Deutsche Mark was a specific kind of mark, the name being used to separate this mark from the earlier Reichsmark. Whilst I think it's OK to have the Deutsche Mark article called "German Mark", this currency ought to be called Deutsche Mark within the text of all articles, to prevent confusion with earlier currencies. Having said that, it will also need to be made clear that Deutsche Mark initially applied to both the FRG and GDR's currencies. This is not about introducing a little bit of the German language into the English language Wikipedia but about clarity and precission. We need to find a concensus here before we start hacking about articles once more.
Dove1950 17:08, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

To match the style of other currencies, it should really be German X. I was all set to argue that German deutsche mark didn't make sense and was redundant until I looked at the coins. The denomination is "deutsche mark", not just "mark" (on some coins). So, although I think it sounds redundant, I think it's most consistent to use "German deutsche mark" as the title, and "deutsche mark" in the text where German is obvious. Now as far as FRG vs GDR, I've mentioned that at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numismatics#More move discussion. It seems biased to me that we list East German mark but the "West German mark" is just German mark (for now anyway). I'm going to add a link there back to here and a suggestion that German mark should be German deutsche mark. Let's finish this discussion there so that other Numismatics project members can comment if they want to. Mom2jandk 21:42, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
I don't agree. Current style is to use English demonym, followed by local currency name. That the short name of the German mark in German happens to include the local demonym is of no consequence to us; I can agree with calling it deutsche Mark (with non-capitalized "deutsche") in the article, though. ナイトスタリオン ✉ 06:57, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
To me, it seems analogous to the German reichsmark which on some coins is just "mark", on others "Reichs<next line>mark". Mom2jandk 21:49, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
The "English demonym" is/was Deutsche Mark. That's how the currency was refered to. That a translation of this name is "German mark" is all well and good but the name in both English and German was Deutsche Mark. How we deal with the capitalization is another matter. There seems to be a concerted campaign against capitals in Wikipedia. The problem is that a German noun is always capitallized. As Deutsche Mark was a single noun (i.e., not a mark from Germany but the German mark) both words are capitalized in German. Take a look at the German language Wikipedia [1]. The point here is to put down a marker that style must be correct as well as consistent.
Dove1950 15:23, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
While you are correct as far as the capitalization of Deutsche Mark in German is concerned (sorry, must've been half asleep when I negated you on that), the reasons you give are wrong: Deutsche Mark is not a "single noun". Deutsche is still an adjective, of course. What is the case, however, is that Deutsche Mark is a fixed phrase, just like the Union der Sozialistischen Sowjetrepubliken, and that's why the adjectives are capitalized (just like in titles and headings).
What I'd propose is that we use German mark as the article title, and Deutsche Mark (with italics, I'd say, though I won't change it if you prefer to write it in standard typeface) in the article body. 's that alright? ナイトスタリオン ✉ 17:28, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm okay with anything that's consistent. I (obviously) don't know much about German, or historical currencies. I'm great at being a stickler for details (also obviously :). Anyway, does anyone know how the usage of "Deutsche Mark" in English and German relates to the use of "Reichsmark"? Their use on the coins seems comparable to me. Should we capitalize/italicize Reichsmark? What about the other German currencies? Do we need to find out capitalization rules for other languages whose denominations we're talking about? Could get to be a major mess!
As far as general style, yet another thing I want to bring up at the Numismatics style guide but haven't gotten around to, is whether to italicize currency names (I'm not familiar with the word "demonym" by the way -- does it mean denomination?). Generally, foreign words are italicized, but foreign loan words (words which started out foreign but are now English) are not. I guess that means that some should be italicized, and some should not, which does not appeal to me -- I'd rather have one rule for all.
Just to add another issue, it has been proposed (by me, but I can't remember where) that it's biased to separate the East German mark from the German mark/Deutsche Mark and not have an article for the West German mark. I'm curious to know what you think about that, Dove. Ingrid 02:53, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese yuan

At present we have one article entitled Renminbi to which Chinese yuan links and another entitled yuan which doesn't have much in it. Current style suggests that we should have a single article entitled "Chinese yuan" encompasing all Chinese yuans, or split the Renminbi yuan off (to "Chinese renminbi yuan") and keep "Chinese yuan" for all earlier such currencies.
Preferences?
Dove1950 20:20, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Such an unnecessary redundancy

Why is there a section "Historical currencies" when there is an article List of historical currencies. This is absurd. --Chochopk 13:55, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

That page was created because someone had deleted all the present currencies listed here and was intended to tidy things up. However, it was decided that deleting the list of present currencies was a bad idea (as List of currencies is formatted very differently) and consequently this article was reverted, without List of historical currencies being deleted. If you find the situation absurd, please delete List of historical currencies and leave the list this article.
Dove1950 18:48, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Historical Currencies

A user called syrthiss has deleted the Historical currencies category and replaced it with "Modern obselete currencies". Does anyone know how to undo this vandalism?

I thought that was part of the recategorization. He did a lot last night. said it was from the CfD about recat, Historical, Euro, Americas, everything. Joe I 20:58, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
Recategorization is all well and good when it doesn't create something with the silly name of "Modern obselete currencies". What's "modern"? When do we put a currency in "Ancient obselete currencies". Furthermore, where was this recategorization discussed?
Dove1950 21:11, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Definition of Currency

I would like to offer new definitions - perhaps inserted in a new section called "Other Definitions"

Currency: That which circulates as a medium of exchange; anything that is in immediate, continuous and widespread use as money.

Money: A psychological creation; a concept; the mental image of that which is used as a medium of exchange.

Taken from the Nesara Institute.

inigmatus 18:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lists

Why are there lists of currencies on this page? There are already individual pages for them. – Zntrip 03:05, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Good point, should just make a see also to relevent lists. Joe I 03:08, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, this suggestion was acted upon, generating a mess. I've now put all the currencies that used to be listed in this article in List of currencies. Given that some has time passed, there may be new currency articles that are not in List of currencies. It would be helpful if those writing such articles could check the list.
Dove1950 14:30, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Numismatics Template

Why doesn't this article use the Numismatics template? Should it be added? I'd suggest that the Exchange Rate template could be moved further down the page. - N1h1l 13:53, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Having gotten no feedback, I decided to go ahead and swap in the numismatics template, which seems more appropriate. The exhange rate template really doesn't seem to belong here, although I wouldn't object to someone putting it in lower on the page. - N1h1l 14:54, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not "World Wide View" in Legal tender era section

This section seems to shift in tone and examples to an English or American point of view. Among other things, it uses the quote "all debts public and private". Views from more economies or a a clarification of where this quote comes from is desireable. Davidsv (talk) 07:37, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Changed this to a world wide view tag instead of neutrality. Davidsv (talk) 01:51, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] lol money

money lol —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.183.121.32 (talk) 04:19, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

…Knowing the Value of a Currency is an Economical Standard,Though sometimes it isn't. As for a Currency realy isn't a Currency if it is Operated in a manner that can not be recognised as of the final state of circulation,wich has some question to it. 4:44 p.m. e.s.t.David George DeLancey (talk) 21:44, 18 March 2008 (UTC)