A sign of the times....

On my recent trip to Mexico I was struck by a many things. But this sign in the airport was most interesting. When I began to go to Mexico, the currency traders were able to do dollars and Canadian dollars in a fairly efficient manner. But as you can see from the sign they now have efficient trading spreads in a number of near and far currencies. What also struck me was the willingness to trade Rubles and Yuan. By the sign that seems to be a developing market - the spreads between buy and sell are huge - but they would not put it up unless there was some volume. Notice also that a number of currencies with artificial values like the Venezuelan Bolivar and the Cuban Peso have a fairly high premium on their spread.