This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, October 1st, 2013. I'm Caleb Brown.

There are many legitimate complaints about the US dollar, but it's not all downside.

Especially for Ecuador, a country that has dollarized.

They are the US dollar and its fluctuations

serve as a check on government access.

Gabriela Calderon is a research associate at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity,

she comments.

At the end of 1999, Ecuador had a major financial crisis, arguably the worst financial

crisis in its history.

And as the last recourse measure,

the government back then decided to do away with monetary policy altogether.

And we adopted the US dollar as our currency as the official currency

used in the country for all transactions. Ever since then the run on banks was

controlled and not only that but also interest rates which were three-digit

interest rates went down and inflation which was normally double-digit inflation

went down.

And during the past now almost 13 years,

we've had inflation that averages around 4% almost.

And so we've, we're one of the countries in Latin America with the lowest inflation rates during the past decade.

And that has allowed us to, I mean to get really sizable reductions in poverty and to keep a sense of price

stability that Ecuadorians had never experienced for such a long time before.

Okay so I mean Americans might not like in many cases what the dollar has done.

...