Financial rand had a previous life, from January 1979 to February 1983. The 1985 crisis coincided with a default (then called a "standstill") on foreign debt by the apartheid government. Financial rand The South African financial rand was the most visible part of a system of capital controls. Although the financial rand was abolished in March 1995, some capital controls remain in place. These capital controls are locally referred to as "exchange controls", although the system has since 1995 moved towards surveillance — recording and reporting to the authorities of foreign currency transactions — rather than control. Capital controls have been in
Optimum currency area rationale behind the creation of the euro is that the individual countries of Europe do not each form an optimal currency area, but that Europe as a whole does. The creation of the euro is often cited because it provides the most modern and largest-scale case study of an attempt to identify an optimum currency area, and provides a comparative before-and-after model by which to test the principles of the theory. In theory, an optimal currency area could also be smaller than a country. Some economists have argued that the United States, for example, has some regions that do not