Kaliburg Conference on the Terran Monetary Unit

[Doc]

The Honorable Bradley Marcuse, Her Imperial Majesty's Finance Minister, Empire of Ananto and Kalistan

To answer the esteemed colleague from Deltaria, I want to allow player nations to set their own local currency value against the universal currency.

This could take the form of additional bills that players have access to in their national page. There is currently a "float/pegged" option which right now is merely just a "how do you want your currency to appear?" but I don't think does anything beyond that. That could be useful. The moderators, I believe have access to the ability to create new legislative options, and one can be "What value do you want your currency denominated in a TMU." then I could search that periodically, download the values people set on that bill, and use them to update the cambio. For non player countries, I could just make them all float with the widest range possible, to simulate a host of things. They would all be treated as "volitile" for the purpose of coming up with basically a RNG in a specific range and that would be what they are. Or you can just vote to let your currency float, and I can set your currency to the least volitile range.

This would give players the option of RPing Currency crises in their country (they could set their currency for instead of 1.08 TMU, now all of a sudden, it is changing to like .0000654 TMU, meaning your local currency don't buy shit... basically becomes zimbabwe dollars... And it could stay like that until you are done with the currency crisis.

It would be nice to create a website that changed those values irl, but until we get some hackers up in here, I'll just have to change them manually, and periodically. It's about 10 minutes of work, I'd be willing to put in.

[imperialpearl]

Dr. George Blankenship, Secretary of the Treasury, Commonwealth of Lodamun

We [Lodamun] understand that any criticisms of Lodamun is made against the context of the LOD and not against the body politic. We agree with the mechanism as described by Mr. Marcuse. I have no real criticisms of the proposal as outlined as my main question was interestingly answered in the previous statement. We would be honoured to see these changes implemented.

[Doc]

The Honorable Bradley Marcuse, Her Imperial Majesty's Finance Minister, Empire of Ananto and Kalistan

Hearing no further discussion on the preliminaries, I shall continue:

I propose the creation of the Terran Monetary Unit (TMU) as the single universal convertible currency.

Definition: When I refer to the "Cambio", I am referring to the International Cambio Currency Calculator. If I can find a way to make an online version of the calculator I will, but for now, I will always keep the most recent valuation of the Cambio pinned in the Official Particracy Discord available for DL from Google Docs.

The TMU will have the following features:

1. It will be pegged to the IRL USD. For all practical RP purpose, the value of 1 TMU will be equal to 1 USD.
1a. The actual TMU will be calculated in the Cambio tool. Whatever the USD is in a day, the TMU will also be that +/- .01%. This means it will float within a range of $0.9999 and $1.0001. The reason for this float is to jitter the data to reflect the simulated nature of the TMU. (The jitter is generated at the time of any recalculation. This model is currently in the Cambio to represent the simulated nature of the TMU, and doesn't noticeably affect any direct valuation at more than at most 1 dollar per 1000 dollars. It is determined mechanically, by RNG, generated 10,000 times within the range of .9999USD and 1.0001USD, and then the mathematical average of those simulations represents the calculated value of the TMU, which is then used for comparison.)

2. It will exist as a concept rather than an actual IG currency. Nobody can stock TMUs. Buying and selling of TMUs on the international market will be expressly IG forbidden. It is merely the measuring stick against which all other currencies are measures, permitting their comparison with one another.

3. As such, the TMU cannot be issued by any government, nor will the policies of any IG nation affect the value of the TMU in anyway. Its value is set external to the game. In this way, no country can lay claim to the TMU. Players may however IG express their prices for items in either local currency, for RP flavor, or in TMUs for ease of understanding, and assume that a transaction cost is built into the expression one way or another.

With the establishment of the TMU as the Single Universal Convertible Currency, all local currencies will need a value set against that TMU. Once this is completed, the calculator can accurate calculate relative values of the local currency. The value of the local currencies in the calculator is always expressed as "1 TMU will buy X (local currency). So, for example, if the Kalistani Ruble is set at .45, then the expression is "1 TMU will purchase .45 KRB." (this comes out to, "1 KRB will purchase 2.22 TMU." signifying that the KRB is much stronger than the TMU) When you are setting the value of your currencies, you are saying how many of your currency units 1TMU will purchase.

I propose three different player options for setting the value of local currencies:

1. All non-player nations' currencies will be set to float within a specific range against the TMU. This number will be between .5 and 500. This means that the value of any local currency will be worth between about 2 TMU (simulating the strongest currencies) or as little as as little as .002 TMU (simulating the weakest currencies). I think this is an adequate range to reflect the range of the largest part of the IRL world's currencies. This number will be randomly generated with each revaluation of the TMU, and will simulate ebbs and flows of currency values going on in non-player nations. Since valuation will happen rarely, this will gloss over a lot of ups and downs that happen in currency markets, but it will create a spot value for each nation which is not actively participating in currency markets.

2. All player nations can let their currency float. They can either float within the range described above, or they can choose their own range.
2a. If they choose their own range, here is how they do it: They will need to 1st pass the National Law titled "Exchange rate regime" to allow their currency to float. Then they will need to set the range. 1 TMU being the standard, the range has to be any positive number, including a decimal. If they want a currency stronger than the TMU, they should pick a number between 0.0001 and .9999, and a weaker currency will be >1.0000. There will need to be BOTH a lower limit and an upper limit for the request. Generally most countries shouldn't set a lower limit at less than .5 or an upper limit at more than 6 to reflect a realistic range of currency value. But they can set the limits at anything really.
2b. If they just choose the standard "market" range, the lower limit will be set at .5 and the upper limit will be set at 500, as if it was a non-player country.

3. A player can choose to peg their currency to some value of the TMU.
3a. If they wish to peg their currency, they should pass the law "Exchange rate regime" to signify that they are pegging their currency.
3b. The player needs to supply a value. This is expressed as 1TMU will purchase x (local currency). So, a lower value <1 is stronger against the TMU, while a higher >1 is weaker against the TMU. As most RL countries' local currencies are weaker than the USD, a realistic option would be to select a number >1, with a value of 100 equaling roughly 1 US Cent.
3c. "Pegging a currency to the TMU" means setting the value at 1.00. This means 1 TMU will buy 1 (local currency). This is a player option.
3d. There doesn't need to be a RPed reason for the valuation. Currencies get hard pegged to a specific value all the time for any or no reasons (usually no reasons- it is whatever the speculators in the market agree it is at any specific time for a myriad of reasons, or just panic...) RPing a reason will add flavor, but is not necessary.

I will open a TMU forum, where players can add their currency ranges to the Cambio. They can either add them IC or OOC as a request. I will then update the Cambio and will attempt to keep a new version uploaded regularly. If a Player wants to RP a currency crisis, I could make special updates to the Cambio upon request. It only takes me a few minutes to update it, and just a minute to update any particular value, so Special requests can be fairly easily managed.

I open this up for discussion. Thank you for your attention.

[Drax]

Finance Minister Toislav Brnetic, Veliko Carstvo deltarije:

Will study this and then will have some questions. Really want to understand how to use the TMU rather than pretend.

[Doc]

The Honorable Bradley Marcuse, Her Imperial Majesty's Finance Minister, Empire of Ananto and Kalistan

I encourage questions. To start, if we adopt it, TMU will become the In Game Equivalent to the USD. So if you are trying to sell weaponry, for example, and know that 1 tank is like 40 million dollars, it will be 40 million TMU give or take. We can then convert that into our local currency so we can adjust our budgets and such. If we all have a single measure, which is external to all of us, then we can all measure not only our own currency against that measure, but compare our measurements to what others measure their currency at, and come up with a basis to trade on both local currencies. But that said, feel free to ask anything about it. I am confident I can answer any question, or know how to find the answer, and am happy to do so.

[Drax]

Finance Minister Toislav Brnetic, Veliko Carstvo Deltarije:

Think understand basics. Looks like once adopted, the currency chart in game which sets relation of currencies to one another will be history.

For the inactive nations, and those who do not pass an act, do wonder if floating might really be a lot.

It also seems Option 3 might be the conservative move almost everybody would want to take if they actually join in.

How often would updates be expected?

[Doc]

The Honorable Bradley Marcuse, Her Imperial Majesty's Finance Minister, Empire of Ananto and Kalistan

a) Ideally the currency chart in the game will indeed be history

b) For inactive countries floating would just be at random. Seeing as currency values fluctuate over time, a random float would signify some local "decisions" passed by the ghost legislatures. It would go up and down or whatever, but realistically, the spot at any given point is the result of so many different calculations by investors that it may as well be random (as it the spot of any speculative commodity at any given time like gold, bitcoin, or wheat prices.) For our purposes the float should effectively simulate that.

c) If you are playing as a liberal party you should in theory let your currency float. We could set smaller ranges for the float, of course, so you could still get some of the market sim, but not symbolize a currency collapse, but on the other hand, I can also point out that for example, a peso is not a peso is not a peso: The Argentine Peso used to be pegged at 1 dollar. Then it was pegged at about 33 cents. And now its worth about a cent. Same thing in Argentina, its just that their version of 1 dollar notes now has more zeros on it. Meanwhile the Chilean Peso was worth about .27 (or 1/4th) of a cent when I went there. So when doing quick conversion, we dropped 2 zeros off then divided by 4. It was never gonna be worth more than 4 pesos to a cent, but after the conversion, prices in Valporaiso were roughly cheaper than the same items in the US (for example, a sandwich that cost 2 dollars USD was like 7800 Chilean Pesos, for example). And when I lived in Japan, the Yen was 110 - 116 yen to the dollar, so we figured 100 yen was worth about 91 cents, or one Yen was almost a penny. But prices were comparatively more expensive AFTER conversion, from dollars to Yen on foreign goods and cheaper on domestic goods. So the nominal value of the currency really means nothing, It's only what it means relative to the index or universal currency. This means that a currency can float or be pegged, it only matters what it is at a given time relative to the TMU when making comparisons.

d) It will be updated as often as I think to do it. Ideally, I wish I could code a website that would allow me to do it, like an online currency exchange calculator that I could go into the backend and change values, or make it so they change automatically for me, but I don't know how to do that. I am not that computer savvy. So it will have to be whenever I update the excel. I can do that more or less often, depending on how many people are using it.

[Aethan]

Alexandra Ganoglou, Minister of Finance of Kalopia

The Kalopian government will study this proposal carefully, but so far this proposal can count with our approval as a way to implement a more dynamic economy within Terra