Meeting Iraq’s Demand for Dinars (BBC): To do any serious shopping in Iraq you need to carry around massive wads of local currency which are a real nuisance to lug about. For example, to pay for modest lunch of chicken and rice the other day I had to count out 88 of my 250 dinar notes. There is in fact a higher denomination 10,000 dinar note but most Iraqis refuse to accept them. They’re seen as tainted and lack credibility because so many of them were looted from banks after the war. A money changer will give you little more than half their face value if you try to swap them for other currency. Everybody wants you to pay with low value 250 dinar notes and you need lots of them to make a purchase. Not surprisingly there’s a big shortage. In war-ravaged Iraq only one group of workers is more or less guaranteed a job - staff at the national mint. It’s running at full tilt to keep up with demand.
Comment: this article assumes that printing money is the way to accommodate the need for large quantities of dinars, without considering the possibility that the need for large quantities is a result of printing money. The more money you print, the more intense the ”shortage” becomes!
