Brownie, you're doin' a helluva job, though not as good as those crazy Albanians.
"Bushie, Bushie," people shouted. Some of the business people have received small loans under U.S. government programs.
Source: Bush receives hero's welcome in Albania - Yahoo! News
Albania has eagerly embraced democracy and idolizes the United States. Three stamps have been issued featuring Bush's picture and the Statue of Liberty, and the street in front of parliament has been renamed in his honor.
The article goes on...
In saluting Albania's democracy, Bush praised it as a country that has "cast off the shackles of a very oppressive society and is now showing the world what's possible."
Searching Google for Albania What's Possible brings up some more collecting links.
Were I to take my three leks to my bank and ask for it to be exchanged for American "money," I would probably only succeed in amusing the staff of that institution, which would regard my leks as so much scrap paper. It would do me little good to explain that in Albania, people scramble to get those pieces of paper, although, quite obviously, they do. The lek, although desirable in Albania, is a joke in the rest of the world. Why should that be? Is my piece of paper "three leks" redeemable in anything from the Albanian authority which created it? Of course not. Does it represent some wealth placed upon deposit to justify its issuance? No. Exactly the same, however, can be said for my Federal Reserve Notes. Yet the American currency is "strong;" the Albanian, weak. Obviously, the lek lacks something.
Actually, it lacks a couple of things, at least. For one thing, there isn't much you can buy with it. Albanians, sad for them, don't produce anything that the rest of the world wants. I bought the leks to obtain some Albanian goods to bring home as a souvenir; in the whole town we couldn't find anything worth buying. So if you have a currency only good in Albania, and there's nothing worth buying in that country, what good is it, except to an Albanian, who has nothing else to use, and has to buy food and clothes with something. So one characteristic of a "soft" currency is that it is the currency of a country that doesn't produce much in the way of desirable goods or services. You can be sure that if the Albanians were to announce that they had discovered, and were offering for sale, a cure for cancer, that the lek would suddenly become very desirable.
Maybe putting Bush's picture on their stamps will inflate the lek? Perhaps that is what is causing the USD to lose it's value...
