The Land of the Dong

In the small and troubled Communist land of North Viet Nam, just about the safest thing to be is a Cabinet Minister. If Boss Ho Chi Minh likes the man, he is apt to keep him around, no matter how many mistakes he makes. But the performance of Finance Minister Le Van Hien was too much even for the indulgent Ho to bear.

Le's chief qualification as a Finance Minister was that he was a faithful party member. A onetime mailman who spent much of his early life in and out of French colonial jails. Le was all right in guerrilla days when he confiscated enough rice from the peasants to feed Ho's troops, in return for which he issued bales full of newly minted dongs, all bearing Ho's portrait. But running an economy of 12 million people came a little harder. Today, salaries and taxes are still computed in bags of rice, and on this basis a worker earns 300 bags a year, while his counterpart in non-Communist South Viet Nam gets the currency equivalent of 1,500. In Hanoi, rice is still rationed, and beggars, though forbidden by law, swarm the streets. The dong has sunk so low--7,000 to the dollar--that it may well be the worst currency in the world. Even sister Communist countries refuse to accept it, and North Viet Nam's trade with them is through barter. Last week at long last, Minister Le, the Red who could write his budgets only in red ink, got the sack.

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