We’re millionaires
When we were youngsters on the farm we used to dream big dreams about being millionaires some day. In October this dream was finally realized for me. On a visit to Turkey I took $50 American to a bank and was given 4,544,000 Turkish lira.
That country is struggling with inflation at 80 percent per year, but its leaders will proudly tell you this is an improvement on the 100 + percent level they had earlier.
Strangely, there is no sign of the austerity budgeting that seems the norm in North America.Turkey is in a building boom, with forests of apartments being built and cities growing like mushrooms. A spokesman said the apartments are being built by housing co-operatives with bank financing.
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Turkey is now under the supervision of the World Bank and International Development Bank which are attempting to rein in the Turkish economy.
In the meantime, multi-national companies have found that Turkey’s low wage scale and access to water transportation make it a profitable place to locate manufacturing plants. So Turkey is manufacturing cars, appliances, armaments (including tanks) and all kinds of consumer goods. They’ve even revived DeSoto trucks.
Dealing with millions of lira proved not too difficult. The Turkish people are basically honest and good humored, two valuable qualities in dealing with someone who hands you a 200,000 bill when a 20,000 lira note was indicated.
We learned a million meant about 10 bucks American, 100,000 was a dollar, 10,000 was 10 cents and 1,000 was a penny.
Like to borrow a million?
