When We Go To War Our Money Goes To War
image courtesy some dude’s ebay auction
Back in Vietnam, military bases required soldiers to convert their US dollars to U.S. Goverement issued Military Payment Certificates, or MPC’s for short. These were often psychedelic colored paper notes with women’s portraits featured on them – a far cry from the boring green and black inked old men in regular circulation.
The reason was to thwart black markets and to keep the opposition Vietnamese government from getting ahold of strong US currency to fund the fight against us. You can read a pretty good explanation at wikipedia.
Of course this money, meant to be spent on base, leaked out into the local economy which would then be destabilized. Just picture yourself a native running a bar in Saigon and deciding whether to accept US backed money or North Vietnamese money. Since it is armed US servicemen in your bar, you’d be inclined to think their money will hold its value for a lot longer than your own country’s in the middle of civil/international war.
Without notice the military base would close itself off and require all the MPC’s to be turned in for a new series, effectiviley annihilating the old currency and bankrupting blackmarketers – for the time being.
What I want to research now is how we operate in Iraq today. Are we minting a new currency or are we using our money as it is in hopes of destabilizing Iraq’s economy? Just think – US dollar, a weapon of mass economic destruction.
Wikipedia implies that today’s soldier is given a type of debit card, but since I am about to go to a funeral, I don’t have time to look into it right now…
It was a nice evening last night, by the way, at the funeral home. I saw a lot of relatives and friends and it was nice to reconnect with this large family of mine in New Hampshire.
You got our love with you tonight buddy.
Comment by al — October 18, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
Family is funny.
Comment by al — October 18, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
i know, it’s bitter sweet seeing family. my father died in July and i wish that it didn’t take someone’s death to get family to come together or for us to realize how much of those people is in us and us in them. for better or worse, funny or not, we are our respective families – racist, sexist, agist, classist,stupid, brilliant,kind, foul, dangerous, warm and surprising. accept your family because, you can’t fight DNA. you can make some improvements of course and you can challenge it but to fight it is only shadow boxing.
Comment by don't i know it — October 18, 2007 @ 10:42 pm
I didn’t know you were still in town….when the hell are we gonna get together like old times?
Comment by J Landry — October 19, 2007 @ 5:54 am