The E-Sylum:  Volume 5, Number 1, January 6, 2002, Article 7

THE EURO AT DAY TWO

  From the January 3, 2002 Wall Street Journal:

  "On its first day of official business, the euro proved so
  popular on the streets that banks in some countries were
  overwhelmed.  Germans defied predictions of a grudging
  transition in Europe's largest economy by lining up to
  ditch their marks in such numbers that two branches of
  HVB Group had to temporarily close. In the Netherlands,
  there were postholiday bottlenecks at automated teller
  machines that had customers fuming in bitterly cold weather."

  "At Frankfurt's savings bank, the Frankfurter Sparkasse,
  400 employees from the head office were pulled in to help
  work the counters. At a branch across from the Frankfurt
  Stock Exchange, the line stretched through the lobby and
  out into a pedestrian zone. The scene was much the same
  at a Deutsche Bank branch in Frankfurt, where 73-year-old
  Gerda Beisinger was determined to surrender her last marks
  on only the second day of the euro. "We are part of Europe,"
  Ms. Beisinger said. "The U.S. has one currency, and now
  Europe does, too. We want Germany to be part of that."

  Euro-zone residents will be allowed to continue to use their
  national currencies through February. And for shopkeepers
  Wednesday, the challenges were to figure out how to
  calculate change in one currency for purchases made with
  another -- and in simply finding enough change to dispense.
  The Cafe Bonne Journee in the Madelaine subway station
  in Paris didn't have any small-denomination euro coins
  Wednesday morning, and salesperson Alem Baya was
  obliged to hand customers IOUs along with their croissants.
  The cafe lacked one-cent, two-cent and five-cent coins, so
  the IOUs were only for small amounts. "We were told it
  was forbidden to give change in francs," said Ms. Baya.
  "But it's not a problem because these are all regular
  customers."

  Vicente Caballero, the owner of Felicisimo, a store in
  Madrid, said he went to the bank three times during the
  morning for euro change and still didn't have enough.
  "People are using small stores as if they were banks," he
  said. "A man just tried to pay for a chocolate worth 150
  pesetas with a 5,000-peseta bill and got mad because I
  wouldn't give him euro change."

  [The IOUs mentioned in the article are a true numismatic
  phenomenon, a last resort used in many societies when
  coin of the realm becomes scarce.  Their ephemeral
  nature makes them a very interesting artifact documenting
  the problems faced by individuals during the changeover
  period.  Have any of our European subscribers seen these
  in use?  Did anyone add them to their collections? -Editor]

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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