Today was the first day 250 banks all over Iraq commenced the exchange of the old Iraqi currency(ies) with new unified notes recently printed abroad, in Britain I guess. It was surprisingly a peaceful and quiet day, contrary to all expectations and rumours circulating in Baghdad that banks would be targetted the first day they started the exchange process.

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People were happy, I talked to some people in my neighbourhood who had been fortunate to be the first to see the new notes. They showed them to me, the notes were beautiful and obviously of a very high quality, shiny and crispy. They come in 50, 100, 250, 1000, 5000, 10,000, and 25,000 Dinar bills. The 25,000 D note sounds extreme and unneccessary, and might create a few problems when dealing with such large a note. But most importantly they looked impossible to forge, which was the reason they were made in the first place.

People have been having a lot of trouble with their money the last 6 months. First the problem of the 10,000 dinar bills, billions worth of these notes were looted from banks and banks' printing storages, and a large majority of these were without printed serial numbers. But the looters cleverly solved this little annoyance, they simply stole the whole bank press and machinery along with the ink used and other details, and started to print their own numbers and notes. So the greedy idiots at Al Kifah street (which is the Wall street of Baghdad) decided not to deal with the 10,000 bills at all and bought them at prices ranging from 6500 to 8000 per note. Of course merchants followed and that was that. No matter how genuine your notes were, nobody would take them at their real value. Add to this problem that most Iraqi merchants, businessmen, and families had exchanged their smaller notes with 10k notes before the war, and you get the picture. And in the first month the CPA decided to give salaries in 10k bills which didn't help at all. Central Bank and CPA officials stated all the time that 10k bills were valid and that there was no truth in the rumours that indicated otherwise, but people wouldn't listen.

Another problem which surfaced in the last 2 months was the 250 dinar bill. We have two kinds of these, the old one which was used during the 90's and the new one which started circulating last year. Both have Saddam on them, but the second is smaller. Anyway, AL Kifah st. financial 'experts' were out of ideas how to make more money, so they decided to spread a rumour that most of the small 250 D bill were forged, and so they wouldn't deal with them anymore, except of course they would gladly buy them at lower prices. I couldn't imagine people would be so stupid to believe this, but sadly they bought it. In present day Iraq, rumours work better than official statements, people for some reason always believe the rumour and think that any official statement is just a cover up or some sort of conspiracy to fool them. Iraqis never trust their governments, and they don't believe what they say due to obvious reasons from their late history. The American adminstration in Iraq should know that by heart and they should act accordingly to gain the peoples trust.

So all this mess would obviously highlight the importance of a new currency in Iraq today. If it were only to get rid of Saddam's picture from our money which seems to mock us everyday smiling back at us. it was enough for that reason alone. Some people marked this day , 15/10, as the 'second fall of Saddam', I agree with that. 'His' face will now be forever erased from our memory. It's a great day for Iraqis.