Origins of misapprehension concerning the purpose of the foreign currency clause

Abstract

The paper identifies a widespread misapprehension concerning the purpose of the foreign currency clause and analyses the various possible reasons behind that misapprehension. The omnipresent dilemmas in domestic legal theory regarding the legal principle of monetary nominalism and valoristic doctrine are deliberated in the first part of the paper. The second part deals with the wider macroeconomic context in which the legislator enabled contractual arrangements containing foreign currency clauses, thus providing a comprehensive explanation as to the origins of factual errors, and thereby misinterpretation and misunderstanding of the law.

Keywords

• monetary obligations
• foreign currency clause
• monetary valorism
• bilateral contracts
• credit contracts