BAGHDAD, May 14 (UPI) -- Reach into your pocket to see if you have a dime.
Now picture using dimes for all your daily transactions: buying groceries, putting gas in the car -- or, for that matter, buying a car.
That's the situation in alliance-occupied Baghdad where the 250 Iraqi dinar note is the only accepted legal tender. While this is an improvement on a couple of weeks ago when there was no official Iraqi currency in circulation at all, there's a problem.
The changers place bundles of bills on the scale and then calculate the numerical value based on the weight.
At the same time they constantly have their eye on the U.S. dollar exchange rate that bounces up and down like a tennis ball throughout the day. A variation of between 1,500 dinars and 1,430 dinars to the dollar in a 10-minute period is not unusual, the change depending on the latest developments in Iraq -- or the latest rumor.
Whenever there's word that new notes are being printed and their distribution is imminent the value of the 250 note plummets. Then as nothing happens, it creeps upward again.
"I thought I'd make money in this business, but I'm losing my shirt," says Kase al-Shara, 32, who owns a barber's shop near two central hotels where many foreigners are staying. "I have no phone, so I can't change my rate when the 'official' rate changes."
At least five banks are now open for business in central Baghdad, says a senior official from the Pentagon-run Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, who declined to be named. The money changers dispute this claim, saying they have not yet seen a bank open.
The high volume of business at the 10 or so changing tables set up near the hotels appears to indicate that, even if banks are open, few people seem to be using them.
"No banks are open now because there's no security," says Noor al-Deen, 38, another money changer nearby. "This money changing is safe. Who would want (to steal) these notes?"
A 10,000 Iraqi dinar note that also went into use (worth about $3) is now virtually worthless, the money changers say. No merchant will take a bill with a serial number over 200. Al-Deen explains: After the fall of Baghdad, Iraqi treasury workers stole money-printing machines and materials and started making their own bills.
This has hit hard the many Iraqis who, in the time honored fashion had kept their savings at home in 10,000 notes.
Government workers, including teachers and many hospital staff, were recently given "emergency payments" of $20 each by the ORHA. The payments flooded the market with dollars, which drove the price down against the extremely weak Iraqi dinar, al-Shara said.
Still, it's likely to be the only local negotiable instrument for some time. Discussions are under way to create a new currency -- one that will not have the face of deposed President Saddam Hussein, the ORHA official says, but he has no answers to such questions as when the new currency may be put into use, where it will be printed, or whose face will replace Saddam's.
In the meantime, the exchange tables continue to do a brisk business in a colorful bill colored blue and purple. "I don't know about the future, but dollars are more stable for now," al-Shara says. "I'm also keeping the 10,000 notes, even the fake ones, because the central bank will take them sooner or later."
