"Visitors to Burma notice that everyone, even trishaw peddlers, want to be paid in U.S. dollars -or coupons called FECs, or Foreign Exchange Certificates. After all, the local currency known as kyat is hyper-inflated and loses value almost daily. As one Burmese told the author, the successful mohinga [soup with noodles] seller down the street "buys gold every evening because she?s afraid of the money." The FECs are an attempt by the ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) to overcome that lack of confidence in the currency - and provide a linchpin for a supposedly "open-market economy" as a medium of exchange and a store of value..."