Re: Imposing the US Dollar on Canada

["Alan G. Isaac" <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 18 Apr 2001, Harry Veeder wrote:
> Giving up OUR currency means abandoning OUR land, OUR heritage.

How?  Look around.  A lot of countries have given up
their currencies without any losses like those you
name.  There are arguments for and against full
dollarization, but you haven't found one of them.

Dollarization is one of those issues where the debate is
likely to consist more of heat than light, and where the
economic interests of ordinary people are likely to be
ignored in favor of ideological rants or nationalist
ravings.  Even Ian atypically succumbs to the current
fever and represents an ITC staff paper
as the ``US proposal'',* which may reflect naivete about
the nature of staff papers but I suspect actually reflects
a (hopefully transient) genuflection before some current
notion of the politically correct.  In any case, the
paper does not actually contain a dollarization ``proposal''
as far as I can tell.

Additional discussion, suggesting a range of views in all
the countries involved, can be found at
  http://www.dallasfed.org/htm/dallas/events/dollarspeech.html
The bottom line is that there are costs and benefits to
adopting the currency of a large major trading partner,
and the usefulness of doing so will depend on country
specific circumstances.  An unpleasant state of affairs
for those who like to wallow in certainties.

Alan Isaac

*To quote:
``The opinions and conclusions contained in this publication are those
of the authors and are not the views of the Commission as a whole or
of any individual Commissioner.''