Changing Money in Iran: A Report From Tehran's Ferdowsi Square
At the center of Tehran's currency exchange, traders try their best to ignore the people knocking on the door. Meanwhile, not far away, a half-dozen men standing on a raised platform clutching small calculators and large stacks of cash take orders from the public, briskly relieving them of their increasingly worthless savings.
TEHRAN — Some 200 people wait impatiently in the morning sun on the pavement outside the cluster of exchange shops that line the southside of Ferdowsi Square, the center of Tehran’s currency exchange trade. The shops remain closed 90 minutes after opening time, but the traders remain at their desks using all their efforts to ignore the vain attempts of the people outside to get their attention.
Market volatility, compounded by a shutdown of currency listing websites, has made it too risky to trade today.
“Please, brother, let me in for one moment,” an elderly woman in a chador shouts though the window, removing two large stacks of 50,000 yellow rial bank notes from her handbag and pressing them against the glass security door. “Be kind and may your mother go to heaven!”
Each of her yellow notes lost 15% of their value recently; the value of the rial to the dollar has dropped by well over 60% since December, from about 13,000 rials to the dollar to approximately 37,500 rials to the dollar on the street this past week, other sources in Tehran note.
