What Gives the Philippine Peso Value and How Does it Differ from the Dollar?


It's always been a misconception that our money, the ones you have in your wallet right now, is given value because it is backed by gold reserves of the central bank. No, it is not. It is fiat currency. The same question was raised the other night during our meeting with some Bitcoin enthusiasts (see Bitcoin in the Philippines).

Even I, as much as I know our money is fiat, don't know exactly how our methods or policies differ from the infamous Federal Reserve that prints the US dollars. And so I consulted some libertarian friends as they would be more knowledgeable about the topic and here are some of their clarifications:

"Our BSP is a state owned entity, not a private bank like in the US. I've seen some anti-Fed guys in the US calling for state control of the Fed. We have that here. I don't see how it makes things better." - Acts of the New Commonwealth
"Last night, there was the question whether Philippine currency was actually backed. Definitely not, as evident in the ff:
1. If ou
r money was gold-backed, our exchange rate would be much higher in relation to all other currencies.
2. BSP engages in open-market operations same as the States. ... From my understanding, the BSP can extend indefinitely those loans which have certain maturity rates, simply by loaning over and over again.
3. Fractional reserve banking. The reserve requirement is about 18% at present I believe.
4. Prices wouldn't continue going up. They'd only rise as far as savings go down. With money supply unchanged, any price increase in one sector means a corresponding decrease elsewhere."
  - Colorfulrag
"It's not backed by gold since BSP banknotes are not anymore treated as money substitutes (that you can exchange for gold at the BSP) but as money itself. It all goes back to the Nixon's severing the link between money and gold in 1971. World has been under a system of fiat currency ever since, hence all the cyclical shocks in world economies in the past 30 some years." -Laissez Faire Filipino

See Also: Can Individuals Survive Without a Central Bank?

7 comments:

  1. "Prices wouldn't continue going up. They'd only rise as far as savings go down. With money supply unchanged, any price increase in one sector means a corresponding decrease elsewhere."

    Can you explain how this works?

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. Thanks for this. This helps. I am also confused how monetary system works in the PH. Why it's hard to find data here unlike in the US? Or maybe i just don't know where to find it.

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  4. to much printing of money like dollar's quantitative devaluate the value...actually no value because its not back up by gold...anytime dollar collapse great world chaos fallows. emminent dollar collapse approaching...RESET

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  6. Can the peso switch back to being backed by gold or preciousmetals??

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  7. LOOK WHAT OUR CURRENT GOVERNMENT IS DOING TODAY.WE ARE BORROWING TOO MUCH DEBT AND PRINTING ALLOT OF MONEY INTO OBLIVION.I HOPE OUR WILL NOT SUFFER LIKE WHAT IS HAPPENING IN ZIMBABWE.THE CONSEQUENCE WILL BE PASSED ON TO THEIR CITIZENS THROUGH TAXES AND INFLATION.I WONDER WHAT KIND OF WEEDS OUR GOVERNMENT SMOKING.

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