Venezuela Orders Bank Notes by the Planeload
Source: MSN
CARACAS—Millions of pounds of provisions, stuffed into three-dozen 747 cargo planes, arrived here from countries around the world in recent months to service Venezuela’s crippled economy, but instead of food and medicine, the planes carried another resource that often runs scarce here: bills of Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar.
The shipments were part of the import of at least five billion bank notes that President Nicolás Maduro’s administration authorized over the latter half of 2015 as the government boosts the supply of the country’s increasingly worthless currency, according to seven people familiar with the deals.
And the Venezuelan government isn’t finished. In December, the central bank began secret negotiations to order 10 billion more bills, five of these people said, which would effectively double the amount of cash in circulation. That order alone is well above the eight billion notes the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank each print annually—dollars and euros that unlike bolivars are used world-wide.
Economists say the purchases could exacerbate Venezuela’s economic meltdown: injecting large numbers of freshly printed notes is likely to stoke inflation, which the International Monetary Fund estimates will this year hit 720%, the world’s highest rate.
Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/venezuela-orders-bank-notes-by-the-planeload/ar-BBp6pM9?li=BBnbfcN&ocid=HPCDHP
I've never seen such an incompetent leader of an economy as Maduro, maybe besides Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
From the article: A color photocopy of a 100-bolivar bill costs more than the note. In an image that went viral on social media, a diner is shown using a 2-bolivar note to hold a greasy fried turnover because it is cheaper than a napkin.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Children use notes of German money as building blocks during inflation...
