I came across this while reading my morning emails. http://www.goldmoney.com/gold-research/vietnam-to-ban-gold-as-legal-tender.html Comments and opinions please.
Vietnamese still know gold is money and sometimes use it to settle large trades like property. Be cool if we start doing things like that here. I heard they were the biggest importer of gold in 2008.
They have a whole different mindset about gold over here than in Australia.. it is common knowledge that it is 'real' money. You can put gold in bank and receive interest on its dong value (which may be ending) I wouldnt be surprised if the government had outside pressure to do this, bring the flock into the fold. Also recently banned all foreign exchange activities occuring at jewelery stores and independent stores, now all must be done through banks which have slightly different exchange rates than the stores. For a communist country they were more free than us when it comes to managing the personal finances
Banning all foreign exchange at the gold shops does not stop the Vietnamese they just keep on changing the dollar for dong at a good rate and take their chances. They are starting to take note of the Aussie doller now. Last year was the first time I was told by one place they did not want USD only dong. cheers..
Lol, there's an old guy at work from Vietnam (he was a lecturer at a Uni and made it out on a fishing boat while the politcal officers were hunting him down for subversion... he had a few beers with his students.. :/ ) anyway he laughingly joked that the Vietnamese were the worst possible communists, it never really took off with the populace which pretty much quietly do their own thing while the govt runs around bullying the odd example.
