OK, rules violation, I am thus gone. Bye, have fun.
Yeah, sure. Like your diappearing from threads where you are proven wrong is anything new. Who do you think you are fooling? You are wrong and you know it.
Moderator warning
put down the sabre
This is GQ and personal insults aren’t allowed.
Perhaps you merely forgot which forum you’re in. Please don’t do this again.
samclem moderator, General Questions
No. They are priced in the foreign curency (unless it’s an ADR). Coming up with that foreign currency is your problem - of course, they’ll always change your money for you for a commission/brokerage fee.
It’s a US institution (well, not anymore 
) that demands payment for an item in a foreign currency, and you don’t really have a choice in the matter.
DrDeth is immune to reason or facts and once more disappears from a thread where she has been proven wrong.
That’s pretty much it. You can tell somebody up front that they can only pay in Euros, and it’s their business whether they buy your product or service or not.
What you can’t do is allow them to accumulate a debt and then require that they pay in non-US currency (or barter).
Exactly. You can make an offer of any kind you like: "I offer this good or service in exchange for (euros, pineapples, gold, whatever) and no law says you need to accept dollars. Once you find someone who accepts those terms a contract is formed and both parties become obligated to fullfill the terms.
Not so fast. If someone owes me 50 euros (or pineapples or whatever), they owe me 50 euros and I can demand specific performance and a court can impose that specific performance.
But if someone becomes indebted to me for other reasons, like they damaged my car or they caused me some harm, the courts will assess the compensation in dollars and that is what I am bound to accept.
In other words, they have acquired a debt which was in unspecified units and the courts will assess it in dollars. Or the IRS will assess my indebtedness to them in dollars, etc.
But if I owe you my car the courts can force me to give you my car. But if that is impossible then they will assess the value in dollars and you are forced to accept that as settlement and cannot insist on getting the car.
Suppose your clunker is totalled. You cannot demand that the insurance pay several hundred thousand dollars to have it restored and they will pay you in dollars the fair market value and you are forced to accept that because nothing was specified. BUT there is nothing prohibiting an insurance contract from specifying a different currency or unit. For example, an insurance contract for travel abroad could specify that the compensation would be in the currency of the country where the goods have to be replaced.
You can demand it, but a court likely won’t order it. Specific performance is reserved for goods of particular uniqueness or other unavailability in the open market. This, the law holds, is the case with each and every piece of real estate–a fairly counter-intuitive rule if you’ve ever seen tract housing–which is why SP hypos usually involve real estate agreements. A sale of a Kandinsky painting would also be subject to specific performance. You simply can’t go out and find another seller for these things. Otherwise, money damages (in the currency of the jurisdiction) are the preferred remedy in contract actions. A widely circulated foreign currency like the Euro is not the sort of good that will overcome that preference.
Here’s a fun aside: Another type of good that is sometimes unique, the so-called personal services (so called because the person rendering the services matters, such as Lady GaGa singing at your concert venue rather than just any old person singing “Poker Face,” not personal services in the sense of a haircut (unless you have a very celebrated hairdresser)), also will not give rise to an award of SP. The B- answer in law school is because this is “slavery or involuntary servitude” and banned by the Thirteenth Amendment. The A answer is you can order Britney to dance at your awards ceremony, but you’ll end up getting the 2008 VMAs. That is, courts don’t order what they cannot compel someone to deliver.
Well, this gets complicated and is somewhat outside the scope of this thread but yes, in general lines I agree that a court would say “you owe him X euros which are worth Y dollars so pay him Y dollars so he can buy the X euros or you can pay him the X euros”. The court might not order it but would not reject specific performance as settlement.
But anyway, this is a bit outside the topic of this thread.
Why do you keep saying this in response to people claiming that people cannot sell items for Euros only? Why is it relevant? People aren’t claiming that Euros are “legal tender”, they’re saying that your understanding of legal tender is flawed. And it is!
If a widget store opens downtown and only accepts Euros as payment, you are claiming this is illegal. If it is illegal there is a law stating so. Show me that law. Remember, it is not sufficient that Euros are not “legal tender”. Lets assume they aren’t. Now show me the law that states that it is illegal to only accept as payment things that are not legal tender.
Um, folks, while I, too, disagree with what DrDeth asserted, you seem to be missing an essential point:
There is a law that says that certain money is “legal tender.” If you accept the meaning that DrDeath attaches to this phrase, then you would not need any added law to make refusal of the money in question illegal, since the statement that it is “legal tender” would inherently mean that a store would be forced to accept your proffer of the “legal tender.”
Now, here is an important point: y’all are asserting that his/her claim as to the meaning of the word “legal tender” is incorrect. Other than the one citation given, does anyone have any specific evidence to support their meaning of the words “legal tender?” Absent some statute, or case law, defining the words, what y’all are saying they mean v. what DrDeth is saying they mean is just pointless “is too!” “is not!” debating. Head to the Argument Clinic, please.
I have asked to see the law so that we may interpret the exact wording. No cite has been forthcoming.
Not at all. It is up to the person making the assertion to support it. And we are not arguing about the meaning of “legal tender”, we are arguing whether, as DrDeth says, a business can be forced to accept US dollars.
DrDeth says, without providing a cite, that there is a law which says US dollars are “legal tender” and that the meaning of “legal tender” is that people and businesses are obligated to accept US dollars. I find this totally unconvincing because:
1- I have not seen any law that says anything of the sort. I have only seen the words on US currency which I am guessing carry as much weight as “In God we Trust” and are about as equally enforceable.
2- I have not seen any evidence that “legal tender” means anyone is obligated to accept it. It is up to she who is making the claim to support it.
3- If it were true there would be cases and precedents where persons or businesses were ruled by the courts to have to accept US dollars in cases like we are discussing. No such evidence has been presented.
I therefore remain unconvinced that persons and businesses in the USA are obligated to accept US dollars. The interpretation of “In God we Trust” and similar formal words is not really of interest except when it has the force of law.
The questions are
- Where is that law and examples of enforcement? and
- where is DrDeth after making such a categorical claim?
You didn’t read the original citation to the US Treasury Dept. then. At that site, they specifically reference the statute:
And actually, the U.S.C. section in question continues on to say: “Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts.”
Now, the fact that this statute exists does NOT mean that DrDeth is correct. But this is because DrDeth’s interpretation of the meaning of “legal tender” is not valid. And goodness knows we’ve debated the legal tender issue here numerous times. I thought someone had posted a listing of earlier threads, but I see not. Here is a post I made on the subject in 2004, at which time I was already heartily sick to death of the issue, as you can see. 
And I know that the issue has come up a number of times since, and there isn’t so far as I know much difference in answers given. But the general tenor of the discussion is that “legal tender”, whatever it may mean, doesn’t mean what DrDeth is asserting.
So (s)he is wrong, but not because there isn’t a statute.
OK, leaving out “public charges, taxes, and dues” which obviously do not apply, I think everybody except DrDeth understands that if I offer for sale a cutshaft bronze bearing for 50 euros you can accept it or not but you have no debt with me and I am not obligated to sell for dollars.
That might be true in effect, if not in principle, in China where people and businesses are obligated to sell their foreign currency to the government at the official rate of exchange. I do not believe America is quite there yet.