Mr Vicente Marquez, CPA, of 1200 Bayhill Drive, San Bruno, California must have been bitten hard by my blogspot on Dr. Jose Rizal's Noli me Tangere story.
Not only did he calculate the annual compounded interest (at 3% and 5% respectively) of Dr. Rizal's debt to Dr. Maximo Viola regarding the printing cost of his novel. Vic went one step further and computed the monetary value at that period in time. He did this ingeniously by pegging it to the Gold Standard.
See below:
"The Spanish currency was used in the Philippines during the 300 years of
Spanish dominion. In 1869, Spain joined the Latin Monetary Union, where in
1873 only the gold standard applied. According to this standard, one peseta
is equal to 0.290322 grams of gold.
In today's dollar, one gram of gold is equal to US$39.90. If Maximo Viola's
peseta is equivalent to .290322 grams of gold, then I think we can express
your 12,072 pesetas x .290322 x 39.90 =US$139,84033.
Or your 133,593
pesetas x .290322 x 39.90=$US$1,547,521.11."
WOW! That's a million and a half whooping dollar debt.
Pete Fuentecilla of Queens, New York, former Editor of Mekong Circle International Newsletter, posed some questions and offered some suggestions:
"I suggest you contact a trade or investment officer at any Spanish U.S. consulate or their embassy.
Did the Spaniards issue "Philippine" pesetas for colonial use (in the Philippines) or used the regular spanish peseta of that time for their other colonial properties -- Cuba and Puerto Rico ?"
To anyone out there with answers, please send in your comments. Thanks.
Happy RIzal Day celebration.
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