By Ian Cowie Your Money Last updated: June 28th, 2010
About a tenth of the £20 notes in circulation, worth a total of £30bn, will cease to be legal tender at midnight the day after tomorrow – Wednesday, June 30. But what about other banknotes in your wallet?
That stash of foreign currency stored up from your last European holiday might not be as safe as you thought. Not all euros are the same and some might be worth more than others.
Each euro banknote’s serial number tells you which country created it. Some could be worth more than others if the Greek crisis causes debt worries to drive a wedge between northern and southern countries in the eurozone.
Worries about sovereign states’ differing abilities to repay their debts prompted world leaders at the G20 Summit in Toronto to pledge they will half their national budget deficits by 2013. But translating words into action will be a more difficult challenge for some than others. For a few, the challenge could prove simply impossible.
Now rising fears about southern European countries’ financial stability mean it could pay to be able to read the code on your euro. SomeGermans are already insisting on holding on to euros issued in their own country and passing on those backed by southern states. They know from not too distant history what it feels like to be left holding worthless paper which used to be official currency.
While it may seem far-fetched to worry about the future of one of the world’s largest currencies, the wealthy speculator George Soros expressed doubts last week and several other commentators have done so earlier.
When I called the European Union Parliament and Commission press offices in London this morning to seek their comments , none was forthcoming. To be fair, there was some sort of a fuss about eggs going on and one of the people I spoke to promised to call me back. I’ll let you know if they do.
All euros are backed by the European Central Bank but the serial numbers prefixed with X may be regarded as most secure because they are issued by Germany. N is also a good prefix, because these come from Austria. P, L, U and Z prefixes may also be favoured because these are issued by the authorities in Holland, Finland, France and Belgium.
If you share widespread fears that the euro cannot last in its present form, you might want to avoid notes with the prefixes F, G, M, S, T or Y. These are issued by Malta, Cyprus, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Greece.
Here and now, in a long-planned move to make life difficult for forgers, about 150m British £20 notes with a picture of Edward Elgar will be replaced as legal tender on Thursday, July 1, by notes with a picture of Adam Smith. When the change was first announced during the last Labour government, I noted how apt it was that Gordon Brown should replace a great English composer with a Scots tax collector – for that was Smith’s day job before he became an economist.
The transition will no doubt be smooth and the Bank of England says it will continue to honour all the notes it has issued.
No comments:
Post a Comment