USD1 = 16,500 Vietnamese Dong, which literally makes me a millionaire in during my Vietnam visit (well, who isn’t?)… it’s actually quite a pain though, for foreign travellers who are slow in counting lol.
Vietnamese Dong (đồng), if not mistaken, is the second least valued currency behind Zimbabwean dollars. The face value of Dongs started rising since late 80s because of inflation; in 1985 the largest banknote was 500, but now 500,000.
Despite the high inflation rate, Vietnam’s economic growth is quite decent over the time span… most Vietnamese are probably living better now as compared to a decade or two ago.
why can’t they start all over and cut all the zeros :p
lol..then i bet Vietnanese can count very well:P
haha…seems really confusing.
but at least you can hold up all that money and act rich! XD
kyon… I wish it’s as easy as you suggest.
Iris… the locals would just ignore the three zeros behind, making it easy to count… just that foreigners might not accustom to it.
The Vietnamese are certainly trained well when it comes to counting money though… both V-dong and USD are used in Hanoi, and they could convert the currency rather easily.
bb… thing is, most Vietnamese are millionaires :p
vietnamese people count money very fast. the money is probably going to increase over the years since it’s economy is increasing about 8% a year, last time i checked. everything was so cheap but money ran out fast when i thought everything was worth buying.
The biggest challenge with Vietnam economics nowadays is the distribution of wealth… it seems like the rich are getting richer while the poor poorer.
That’s a very good and interesting observation Yein Jee about the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer. Most people have always believed that only happens in a capitalism society. It in fact, can happen in any system.
that very true in vietnam…the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer.
I’d like to have some of that to paste on my wall or add to my foreign collection, lol. Think I’ll go see the exchange bank and load up on some.
Anon#9… it’s not as easy as you hope. Vietnam government is controlling their currency tight, you probably won’t find any banks outside of Vietnam offering their currency exchange.
“in 1985 the largest banknote was 500, but now 500,000.”
Correction of typos.
in 1985 the largest banknote was 50,000 but now 500,000.
Minh… from what I read 50,000 was only introduced in 1990…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_dong
I know Wikipedia could be wrong sometimes… but I couldn’t find other information about this.
In whatever systems, whenever there is scarcity of goods, allocation of scarce resources will have to be done somehow and in some way.
For example, if there is not enough food for every one due to drought or famine.
In Imperial system,
The emperor and his relatives will not get hungry.
In communist system,
The communist party chairman and his senior members will not get hungry.
In capitalist system,
The rich will not get hungry.
While there is no perfect system to ensure equality, a capitalist system can through free market grow the economic pie so that everyone can have a larger share.
Using back the food example, in the quest for profit, farmers and businesses are guided by the invisible hand to come up with innovative ways grow or create more food in the same unit of time and land. Thus leading to greater “economic pie” so that the weak, the destitute and the disabled will not go hungry.
Of course, free market is not perfect and the invisible hand of market forces need to be guided by the visible hand of regulatory authority.