85 percent of Ecuadorians like dollarization (Opinion Piece)

huffingtonpost.com/Professor – Steve H. Hanke wrote Ecuador’s ambassador to the U.S., Francisco Borja Cevallos, wrote a letter, “Ecuador’s Progress,” which was published in the New York Times on August 8th. Ambassador Borja reviews a number of Ecuador’s recent economic accomplishments. Fine. After all, by Latin American standards, Ecuador has performed well. Indeed, my Misery Index rankings for the region in 2014 show that only Panama, Mexico, and El Salvador performed better than Ecuador did.

What Ambassador Borja failed to mention is the true source of Ecuador’s relative success: dollarization. Yes, Ecuador is dollarized. Ecuador represented a prime example of a country that was incapable of imposing the rule of law and safeguarding the value of its currency, the sucre. The Ecuadorian sucre traded at 6,825 per dollar at the end of 1998, and by the end of 1999 the sucre-dollar rate was 20,243. During the first week of January 2000, the sucre rate soared to 28,000 per dollar. Read Article (Read Ambassador’s Opinion)

HAVE YOU THOUGHT OF MOVING TO ECUADOR? DO YOU LIVE IN ECUADOR? THIS BOOK DISCUSSES IN BRIEF WHY THE DOLLAR MAY GO AWAY FOR ECUADOR AS THE OFFICIAL CURRENCY