How many zeros can you fit on a currency note? Yugoslavia managed 11 zeros, but the Zimbabwe went to 14 zeros. I don’t know how many zeros Venezuela has on its currency these days.
Well, they’ve just lopped 5 zeroes off the numbers. So, today, no zeroes on the low value notes.
Tomorrow though, and next week?
One of those time dependent answers……
Doesn’t is still “cost” 300 thingies for a chicken sandwich.
The Weimar Republik managed 14 zeroes in 1923.
To my surprise, depite its own hyperinflation Austria kept it down to a 500,000 kronen note in 1922 ( there was a theoretical 1 million note but it was never issued). It used the Geneva accords, which secured loans to prop up the currency, to create the schilling one of which was worth 10000 kronen.
I do not believe that the new Venezuelan currency “The Wotsit” is based on sound money. The poor place does not have a Seipel or Stresemann to sort out the mess.
Mind you, never forget that when the US called in its loans in 1929-30, the Germans defaulted and took most of the Austrian banking system under with it.
Why not use scientific notation?
Or Conway’s ‘chained arrow’ notation?
I saw an article (on the BBC I think) saying that Maduro had ‘revalued’ the currency. As if it was up to him what the value of that currency is.
When inflation gets that high its meaningless and doesn’t tell the full horrors of living in such a country:
A few factoids:
The median wage is the minimum wage.
The daily wage buys 900 calories of the cheapest calorific food. To put in to context before the socialist revolution began it was “several thousand” and in the USA its over 100,000.
If they want protein the minimum wage will buy 2 eggs and if they want a treat they can save for 1.5 months to buy a Big Mac.
The exodus is greater than that from Syria.
I’m not violent, but I’m prepared to make an exception for those who praised Chavez and Maduro and egged them on.
@BnLiA
Somewhere I’ve got a ‘100 milliarden’ mark note, overprinted (in red) ‘1 billion’ (‘European’ billion, i.e 10^11 to 10^12). Bought at a flea market in Aachen.
Obama considered – seriously – minting a $1 trillion coin to pay off some U.S. debt.
This from the Smartest Man in America™.
Isn’t that just “monetisation of debt”? A standard, if rarely recommended, technique. The US economy is probably strong enough to withstand some of it.
Obviously, if it is going to work, somebody has to buy this trillion dollar coin. Who? Where would you keep it? What would you do with it?
The ultimate rapper bling?
Who could make change?
“Obviously, if it is going to work, somebody has to buy this trillion dollar coin. Who? Where would you keep it? What would you do with it?”
The Federal Reserve. It’s just a legal dodge to bypass the rules on raising the debt ceiling – a way to borrow that’s not regulated the way other methods are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_dollar_coin
Apparently, the concept was invented by someone called “Beowulf” who was “just in it for the lulz”.
Two years ago, the bolivar was 1016 to the dollar. A year ago, 16857. Today it is 8431000 (ignoring the stupid 100000× devaluation). Inflation is of the order of 5% per day. You can’t really extrapolate something that enormous very far out, because you get things like a cup of coffee needing a hundred tons of the highest denomination banknote.
This is quite fun:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/07/venezuela-not-greece-latin-america-oil-poverty
Sorry, Venezuela haters: this economy is not the Greece of Latin America – Mark Weisbrot
Will those who cried wolf for so long finally see their dreams come true? Not likely.
But how can a government with more than $90bn in oil revenue end up with a balance-of-payments crisis? Well, the answer is: it can’t, and won’t. In 2012 Venezuela had $93.6bn in oil revenues, and total imports in the economy were $59.3bn……… This government is not going to run out of dollars.
Hyperinflation is also a very remote possibility.
The comments are particularly fun because one can toast oneself whilst reading it on the radiant and energetic smugness levels, but what I like the most is that they posted a correction! It goes:
The subheading on this article was amended on 15 November 2013. The original one, not supplied by the author, ended with the words “in this oil-rich country the only thing imploding is poverty”. This has now been removed