Title: Why Ecuador and Other States Don't Use Their Own Money | Thomas Jefferson Street | US News
Headings: Outsourcing the Money Supply
Outsourcing the Money Supply
Content: Like about a dozen other small countries, Ecuador doesn’t have its own currency. It just uses the U.S. dollar. It went to full dollarization in 2000 after a financial crisis that saw its own former currency, the sucre, collapse so badly that people started putting their holdings into dollars, unofficially dollarizing the country’s economy. The government simply went ahead and made the switch official. That makes it very simple for Americans to travel in Ecuador. No going to the foreign exchange window. No conversion fees or figuring out whether the purple ones are worth more than the orange ones. [ See a collection of political cartoons on the economy.] What about the Ecuadorians, though? Do they get anything out of using the dollar?