Venezuela Pulls Highest-Value Banknote, Closes Border with Colombia

December 13th, 2016

Via: CNN:

Venezuela just made it harder for its citizens to escape the country’s cash crisis.

President Nicolas Maduro announced Monday night that he’s closing the country’s border with Colombia for 72 hours as Venezuelans rush to exchange bills before they become invalid later this week. He accused “mafias” of moving Venezuelan money into Colombia.

It’s the latest twist in a crisis that symbolizes Venezuela’s severe economic depression, which is having a brutal impact on its citizens’ lives.

The Venezuelan government said in a statement that shutting the border with Colombia was necessary “to counteract the criminal attacks against our currency.”

Some Venezuelans are going to border towns in Colombia to exchange their currency, the bolivar, for U.S. dollars or to spend their money — while they still can — in Colombia where food, toiletries and other basics are plentiful.

One Response to “Venezuela Pulls Highest-Value Banknote, Closes Border with Colombia”

  1. Duros says:

    This seems like a controlled demolition to me, WTF is going on in Venezuela? He was a bus driver as his former job, I hope he was better at that than he is as a politician.

    I get the impression this is a test case, like India, to see what happens when they flip the doom switches in a volatile country, but this could easily be simple socialistic idiocy.

    Sorry to speculate, does anyone have familiarity/history with this situation? I’m going to do some deep research on this, hyper-inflation + a cash ban makes me suspicious.

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