{"id":2363,"date":"2013-01-19T20:01:50","date_gmt":"2013-01-19T20:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hopoi.org\/?p=2363"},"modified":"2013-01-19T20:01:50","modified_gmt":"2013-01-19T20:01:50","slug":"a-fistful-of-tomans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/?p=2363","title":{"rendered":"A Fistful of Tomans"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_2374\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2374\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/hopoi.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/A-Fistful-of-Dollars.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2374\" alt=\"There's money to be made in a place like this\" src=\"http:\/\/hopoi.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/A-Fistful-of-Dollars-300x208.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"208\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2374\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">There&#8217;s money to be made in a place like this<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Kevan Harris in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/v35\/n02\/kevan-harris\/a-fistful-of-tomans\">London Review of Books<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>A Tehran restaurant owner recently told me the advice he\u2019d been giving his friends for the last year: \u2018Sell your car. Buy dollars.\u2019 Sound counsel, I thought. Exchanging Iranian rials for dollars at the end of 2011 and converting them back nine months later would have yielded enough profit to buy two new cars. Waiting another month would have got you a cheap motorbike too. This sort of \u2018street maths\u2019 filters into every conversation. In September a waiter told me he had just sold his stash of $10,000 for a hefty profit. A young woman took her pay cheque to the bank every month and bought dollars with it. In this unofficial currency market the value of the rial dropped nearly 70 per cent in ten months. The frenzied speculation began early last year, after the EU announced it was going to restrict imports of Iranian oil. Government attempts to stem the flight only pushed the rial\u2019s value down further. \u2018The Central Bank governor promises on Tuesday to take action, and the dollar goes up on Wednesday,\u2019 a businessman joked. \u2018So he reverses his position on Saturday, and the dollar goes up on Sunday.\u2019\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kevan Harris in the London Review of Books: A Tehran restaurant owner recently told me the advice he\u2019d been giving his friends for the last year: \u2018Sell your car. Buy dollars.\u2019 Sound counsel, I thought. Exchanging Iranian rials for dollars at the end of 2011 and converting them back nine months later would have yielded &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/?p=2363\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A Fistful of Tomans&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iran-news","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hopoi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}