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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

US Dollars. Not "Republic of Texas" Dollars.

Once states secede, they lose all the clout that comes from being part of the world's only superpower controlling the world's reserve currency. Southern states would be better off switching to Pesos than printing their own.

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Texas is enormous. If they switched to their own currency it'd be doing fine. This "clout" and "superpower" nonsense was talked up big time by Remainers in the UK too. Guess what - post leaving nothing is observably different. The average voter doesn't care about the sort of stuff thinktanks care about. Their concerns are local. A Republic of Texas probably wouldn't have invaded Iraq, and thus may in some sense be less superpowery than the USA, but does the average Texan see that as a problem or a benefit?

The UK has one of the six accepted world's "hard" currencies. Other countries with a similar GDP to Texas cannot issue a hard currency. International trade will still happen in dollars, although I suppose they could print a bill for internal use.

Russia, which has a similar GDP, didn't have any appreciable external debts denoted in rubles. They were denoted in dollars, pounds sterling or other hard currencies.

You're agreeing with me. I'm saying that it is in fact hard to just run a printing press, which is why US dollars are worth something and Zimbabwe dollars are not.

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