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Hello and welcome to Behind the News, my name is Doug Hinwood, the highly customary pair of guests today,

though with more thematic unity than usual.

The economist Francisco Perez will talk about the CFA fronk, a currency used by 14 countries in Africa

that is a strange holdover from the days when France was their colonial master.

And the journalist Caitlin Chandler will talk about the coup de Niger, not entirely coincidentally one of those CFA front countries.

She will talk specifically about US security interests in that country and its neighbors.

Before proceeding, a little correction to last week's show, my guess Sarah Goldrich Rob,

is founder of the Hope Center for College Community and Justice.

I left the word college out of the intro. Sorry.

I've been meaning for a long time to do a segment on the CFA fronk, a currency shared by 14 African countries,

a holdover from the colonial days with no analog anywhere else in the world. I'm finally doing it.

We'll hear in more detail what it's all about from Francisco Perez in a moment.

Before that, let me say a few words about currencies in general. Money occupies a strange role in economics.

In some schools have thought it's almost trivial, a convenience, but not terribly significant in itself.

In other schools, it's Almighty fixed the currency, made by printing lots of it,

and the rest of the economic arrangement will fall into a better place.

Whereas Keynes put it in his treatise on money, there is a common element in the theories of nearly all monetary heretics.

Their theories of money and credit are alike in supposing that in some way the banks can furnish all the real resources which manufacture and trade can reasonably require without any real cost to anyone.

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