MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US dollar no longer king of currencies, not even in NY

In the latest example that the U.S. dollar is not what it used to be some shops in New York City have begun accepting Euros and other foreign currencies as payment for merchandise.

"We had decided that money is money and we'll take it and just do the exchange whenever we can with our bank" Robert Chu, owner of East Village Wines, told a New York television agency. The increasingly weak U.S. dollar, once considered the king among currencies, has brought waves of European tourists to New York with money to burn and looking to take advantage of hugely favorable exchange rates. "We didn't realize we would take so much in and there were that many people traveling or having Euros to bring in. But some days, you'd be surprised at how many Euros you get," Chu said. "Now we have to get familiar with other currencies and the (British) pound and the Canadian dollars we take," he said. While shops in many U.S. towns on the Canadian border have long accepted Canadian currency and some stores on the Texas-Mexico border take Mexican pesos and in Miami Brazilian Reales, the acceptance of foreign money in Manhattan was unheard of until recently. Not far from Chu's downtown wine emporium, Billy Leroy of Billy's Antiques & Props said the vast numbers of Europeans shopping in the neighborhood got him thinking, "My God, I should take euros in at the store". Leroy doesn't even bother to exchange them. "I'm happy if I take in 200 euros, because what I do is keep them" he said. "So when I go back to Paris, I don't have to go through the nightmare of going to an exchange place.