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A comment on North Korea Changes Currency. Parent comment

Re:North Korea Changes Currency by ntoshev on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @11:43AM (#972355)
Any commodity approximates currency, but in practice this doesn't keep totalitarian governments in check.

The government can take away your house or any possessions you couldn't hide, ban trading of popular commodities (like foreign currencies; this drastically reduces liquidity), or, as a measure of last resort, kill you.

Former socialist countries have seen all of these after WWII.

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Re:North Korea Changes Currency by thaumaturgy on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @12:10PM (#972413)
Or, more subtly -- and not requiring any force at all -- a government can simply hoard any commodity or currency through a series of differences in trading other commodities or currencies, artificially inflating the value of the commodity (or currency).
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