A couple of oddball questions, here.

From the late 80's, when "Japan was going to buy America" and the setting was first laid down, it made sense to convert from the US Dollar to the Nuyen as the international currency of choice. Five of teh Big Eight were Japancorps, and all was right with the world.

Skip ahead twenty in-game years to 2070 and, wow, what a difference. Germany's Saeder-Krupp has taken Fuchi's spot as the top corp, only three of the Big Ten are in Japan and the UCAS has two (Three if you count CalFree's Horizon), with a push towards unification and "Sea to Shining Sea" concepts ... even the current UCAS president wants to return to the dollar standard, rather than Nuyen.

So, might it be time?

Would the world economy favor the Nuyen or would the Big Ten switch to a new format (The UCAS Dollar or, more likely, the Euro) if only to kick the Japancorps while they're down?

Behind that, when the Matrix collapsed and did serious damage to the world economy, cash had to get a HUGE boost ... people couldn't trust their money to machines, you see, so wanted it in-hand. What denominations of UCAS dollars are out there and, hey, who's on which bill?

Told you it was an odd question/thought train.

The UCAS never gave up the dollar. It's a digital currency now, though.

You can run campaigns based on other than Nuyen currencies. Older SR material had charts of exchange rates from Nuyen to dollars and many other currencies. It would require adjusting all the prices to the new currency though. The corps probably wouldn't like that too much though because it would add another layer of expense, having to do all that currency conversion.

Printed money isn't that much different from electronic money even today. By that I mean you might have a piece of paper in your hand, but there is nothing backing it up other than faith in the system. There is nothing tangible like gold and silver or megawatts of power or anything backing it up. Still, it is easier to feel secure with hard currency than with an all electronic account somewhere, and keep those printed bank statements some place safe just in case something does crash the system. Personally I do think cash should always be kept around. having been through several hurricanes where the machines didn't work, cash was a real lifesaver.

I think the main reason for the Nuyen in the game was a to give a fixed standard of exchange. In North America along you suddenly had UCAS, CAS, Calfree state (and its subsets), the NANs, Aztlan, etc. all with their own currencies. That is not counting the megacorps and their corporate scrip. It was simply easier to use Nuyen which were universally accepted by all at the same rate for game purposes. Business tends to do this too using the dollar. Most nations accept the dollar at the same rate which makes international business much easier to compute.

Still, it was possible to use the exchange rates and cost of living tables to trade across international borders and make a nice profit. Granted, you had to sneak across those borders to make the most of it and avoid taxes and fees and so forth.

Ok... But since Seattle is part of UCAS, why is nuyen all over the place instead of the UCAS Dollar?

Because all the corps are international. It's a statement about the setting that the popular form of currency is influenced more by corporations than local government.

Ok, makes sense on both counts.

I vote for Deutschmarks!

For me, the term nuyen is replaceable by UCAS Dollars, deutschmarks, etc. There was even a table on currency conversions in one of the SR3 books.

Chromed Accountant hasn't made any appearances that I can recall in SR4, but look to SOE for some information about currency exchanges and how the world works when we cross borders.

I'd be inclined to use the Romanian leu, and I fully expect all vampires to back me up on this one.

Curious if a move from the Nuyen to something else, to gutpunch teh Japancorps, would be in the Corp Court's best interest, tho. The Azzies would back it, because, well, they're jerks like that, and Wuxing probably would, having huge banking power and only gains in the Southeast if Japan's iron grip weakened. The Lof is the Lof. The AmeriCorps might or might not back it, depening on what currency was suggested.

Could certainly make for some interesting times!

It's not really a mark of Shadowrun that corporations get to set the type of currency. People can use whatever currency they want, anywhere, so long as other merchants (corps) are willing to take that currency. It makes perfect sense, for example, for large Big Ten corps to issue corpscript. So long as that currency is widely accepted by (corp) sellers, it doesn't matter what the government says, people will use that currency. It doesn't matter if the currency is hard or electronic, so long as its creation/distribution is regulated in a consistent way that prevents large changes in the supply of money.

Thane's discussion about business using the dollar for example isn't just because it's an "accepted standard" to make international trade easier. It's because the United States has such a large export market, that the dollar is used. United States merchants (corps) are offering goods in exchange for dollars. To buy export, one needs dollars. If you had a currency other than dollars, like franks, you would need to find someone willing to sell dollars for franks before you go buy from a United States merchant (corp). This can be handled instantly and electronically with markets in place already today, and I don't see why the Matrix wouldn't make that even easier.

Let's use corpscrip as an example. If Ares is producing and selling more goods than NeoNet, then the value of Ares' corpscrip will be higher. More people are buying Ares corpscrip than NeoNet corpscrip, so the price raises for those selling Ares corpscrip.

Now let's look at Joe Shadowrunner. He lives in a UCAS area and wants to buy a holster from a merchant or corporation from Ares Extraterritorial areas that is selling a fancy new holster for 100 Ares corpscrip. The merchant wants to be be paid in Ares corpscrip. As he conducts the transaction, the Matrix finds someone selling 100 Ares corpscrip for 120 Fuchi corpscrip. Then it finds someone selling 120 Fuchi corpscrip for 65 Seuder-Krupp corpscrip. Luckily, there's someone selling 65 Seuder-Krupp corpscrip for 125 UCAS dollars.

So from Joe Shadowrunner's perspective, the item is being sold for 125 UCAS dollars and from the Ares mechant's perspective it's being sold for 100 Ares corpscrip. The conversion ratio between dollars and Ares corpscrip for this example is 1.25:1. This generally indicates that Ares will be selling less goods to UCAS, but UCAS will be selling more goods to Ares, which will eventually reverse the situation.

One could adopt the nuyen as a standard medium of exchange for comparison purposes... i.e., 1 Ares corpscrip : 2 nuyen; 1 UCAS dollar : 2.5 nuyen. But then people aren't actually using the nuyen and setting local prices with it, just using it as an international benchmark.

For the nuyen to be useful, there has to be one controlling bank issuing the currency that all others abide by, making it the "official" standard currency of the world, or companies in Japan has to have an incredibly strong export market as people and companies all over the world are trying to acquire japanese nuyen to buy from japanese-based companies and others who deal with the currency with the assumption that they could always use their nuyen to buy from Japan.

Let's assume this latter example happens and nuyen is accepted all over the world. What happens when UCAS steps up production and expands its export market? The conversion ratios change and suddenly less people are buying nuyen and more people are buying dollars, weakining the overall value of the nuyen by some small degree that gradually increases over time. Suddenly your 100 nuyen can only buy 80 nuyen worth of stuff on the international market because the cost of foreign currency has gone higher. Trying to cut your losses, you sell off all of your nuyen and buy dollars.

Today, the United States is used as a standard for international trade because of its strong export market, but its position is declining and a lot of people are worried that if the "trade deficit" doesn't get corrected, a sharp decline in the international value of the dollar will cause people to try to get rid of them in favor of currencies with increasing value, prompting a sharp decline in the buying power of Americans.

I could see a very similiar state happening in the world of Shadowrun today, and this might be a very good reason to explain the existance of corpscrip. As people wonder what's going to happen with the value of their nuyen, they buy corpscrip knowing its at least backed by their companies' local production capability. In many areas, especially extraterritorialities, the corpscrip might be desired more than nuyen. I imagine each corp is trying to promote its corpscrip on international markets.

IMO, given the setting, the world should have made a move toward a unified currency supported by the Gemeinshaft bank on ZO. Such an outcome would allow the Big 10 to essentially dictate the intrest rates over the whole planet.

Considering that monetary policy is one of the few way a government can directly and effectively influence economy, it is very cyberpunkish for them to lose this control.

C-Bills?

Dude.

DUDE!

That's *brilliant*!

I see Power Armor!

C-bills!

Is there some kind of prize with which we can honor Demerzel?

Hell, he's getting a wicked Black Op project named after him in my next session. The Demerzel Initiative must be stopped.

that's a sibylline prophecy…

C-Bills. Heh. Hehehe... BWAHAAAHAAAAAH!

Hmmm... Nah. It's a good idea, to be sure, but the 6th World isen't due to becom the 7th for something like 10,000 years, whereas Battletech is due to start in what, the 2400s? Even though I like the idea of Dragons getting shot from the sky by Atlases, I just don't see it. Mores the pity.

Heh, even worse than that. BT Timline has Kearny and Fuchida doing their work in 2020, and the first launch of a interstellar ship (The Columbia, a subluminal vessel) in 2027.

Nothing a good world reset/massive retcon can't fix.

FWIW, it's generally understood among economists that the world is not an optimum currency area, almost by definition.

RING RING!

RING RING!

"Hello?"

"Hi Pete! It's me, FJ. How's Maupiti?"

"Oh, Jack! Thanks for calling. Maupiti's good, good. Far better than when it had tourists."

"So you finally kicked them all out?"

"I kept the maids, though. Always loved Gauguin."

"I'd bet... Say, I have some people asking for an update of the ol' Corp Download, and I thought that perhaps you could chip in. Interested?"

"Oh man, I've already told you that retired means retired. It's nice that you remembered me, though."

"Well, I had to try, y'know? Especially after the rumours."

"Rumours? What rumours?"

"Oh, just a little story from one of my friends, about Cara Villiers and Aurelius Jr. It's probably screamsheet stuff, nothing you should worry about. It's not like my friend found a transcript on a secure node, or anything like that."

"..."

"Pete? Still there?"

"Damn you, Jack. Send me what you have, I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks, I knew I could count on you. See ya!"

*click*

One comment. While countries making moves to have their currencies gain more use and power would make for a couple interesting adventures. I would generally advise against simply running a campaign in Seatle with dollars. Part of the genre is that things are different. A little bit of futureshock and a little bit of flavor when speaking IC (which is why I would advise using the slang even though you can say fuck or whatever at the gaming table). So I'd always have a different form of currency in my game.

The question is how do I get the D&D adict in my game to stop calling them geepee?

Say "nuyen" under your breath every time he does it?

Subtract a karma each time he does. He'll clean up in a hurry.

Convert his money to GP, that's Gaetronics Print, their particular brand of corp script (note: I'm making stuff up) which is worth about 80% of a nuyen.

Yea, I still pantomime holding up a phone receiver to signal to my players that I'm in the persona of the person they are trying to call... Feels a little wierd given the setting.