Wikipedia offers a List of Countries by External Debt. The strange thing is that every country is in debt. How is this possible? Where is all the money?

 

We, the Republic of Užupis, admit that we have all the money of the world and we will pay your debts. In order to free the world from financial chains, we started printing emergency money from our national currency UžEUR and started distributing it in Munich. The bank notes are left blank so that everyone can enter the amount they need in order to pay their share of their nations debts (between 0 and 846K EUR). This emergency money is a valid currency and 1 Už EUR (~ 4 EUR) will buy you one beer in Užupis.

 

The problem is that such a sudden and massive increase of liquidity would lead to a fatal inflation. We have seen this during and after the pandemic, when governments started printing money like there is no tomorrow. So in order to prevent the inflation, we restrict the validity of the money to 1 hour with no chance to reach Užupis within that time. Instead, we offered to invest the whole amount back into Užupis Treasury Bills with a value of Π thousand UžEUR each.

 

 

The treasury bills were handed out as digital certificates, which can be redeemed by the central bank, if you manage to find it.

 

This installation has been performed at Munich’s Galerie der KünstlerInnen and at Haus der Kunst. Within one hour, we created real valid money equivalent to several million EUR, and extracted it all from the market before it could hurt anyone.