Venezuela and the cash problem
Alright, as promised, I’m going to talk about the current cash problem.
As you may or may not know, Venezuela currently has one of the worst inflation rates in the world, right now at 536% from January till today, in other words, over 50% MONTHLY inflation, which effectively means one’s salary loses half of its value by the end of the month.
So, disregarding the terrible burden this creates on society, as otherwise it would only make this post more depressing and long that its about to become, a growing problem is just how much cash you need to pay for stuff, like, for example, a carton of 24 eggs is right now 28,000 BsF, which makes each individual egg ~1,200 BsF, or 12 bills of 100 BsF, currently the most common bill on the street
So, this means you would need 280 bills to pay for a single carton of eggs.
Which, as you can imagine, has created a problem in which there isn’t enough bills around to meet demand, in other words, there’s more (inflated) value on the streets that there are bills available.
And this is assuming you get to use this one, as the second most common bill is the 50 BsF one, meaning you need twice as many to buy said eggs.
There are other, even minor bills of course, but they hold so little value, and are such a bitch to transport, count, store and use, that nowadays people refuse to use them, going so far as to tell bank tellers to fuck off when given while they try to withdraw their money (but more on that in a bit)
The two and five bills dying out almost two years ago.
So, the Maduro regime, acknowledging this problem far too late, decided to finally accept the hyperinflation reality, which they had refused for 2 years, and ordered the creation of new bills, effectively adding two 0′s to all existing bills as to tackle the cash scarcity problem, which by the end of last year had become endemic.
But since this is Venezuela, these bills took way too long to arrive, having been announced around October last year (give or take, but before December), but only starting to show up en masse around a month ago, meaning that in the time it took them to show up, they lost about 10 times their value, reaching a point in which the highest available bill, the 20,000 BsF one, is not enough to buy one fucking carton of eggs.
And let me tell you, finding one of those 20,000 bills is a miracle these days, as currently the most common one is the 500 BsF bill, which, while cutting the bill load 5 times for all transactions, it nevertheless it still creates the problem of carrying around literal bricks of cash to afford even the most basic of things, with the added bonus that you’re now a target for robbers if spotted, something that had stopped happening simply because spending the bullet on a poor soul wasn’t worth it for the robber.
Now, let’s go back to the banks, as you might be wondering why they’re not helping with the cash problem, and its simple really: They don’t have it either, where you either spend 2 hours on a ATM line to withdraw 8,000 BsF, the maximum allowed in most machines (some just give you fucking 600 BsF, and its literally cheaper to wipe your ass with that than to buy toilet paper), where they never, never, give you new bills, or go into the bank, make a +3 hour line, and arrive at the teller telling you you can only withdraw 10,000 BsF as they’re running out of money, and only in 10 BsF bills, which has started quite nasty, yet ultimately peaceful, verbal fights between the bank personnel and the people in the line.
So, you still need the cash, and while you have it in the bank, after calling the mother of the teller things no suitable for even HBO, you know you can’t go back there, so what do you do? Why, you go cash hunting in business with working card terminals! (good God that’s another problem, but let’s leave it for another day) Where, if you manage to find one with available cash, all you gotta do is give them a commission of up 20% of the value you need for the transaction, which is extremely illegal mind you, but at least you can get all the cash you want, for as long as they have it.
And this is so common, there’s this weird occurrence going on where cash is far more valuable than, well, its face value, so much so you get preference in all business if you announce you intend to buy in cash rather than card (when the option is available that is, good God you guys have no idea how bad the terminal problem is), and can even get a discount, an extreme rarity in these hyperinflated days.
Oh, and since people are assholes regardless of country, some have begun to hoard cash just to sell it at atrocious commission rates (I’ve heard of 40% for wads of 20,000 bills), which is only making the problem, constantly increasing thank to the hyperinflation, worse.
Heh, the problem is so chronic, some people are now using green, free and american fucking dollars, for everyday big transactions, to the point used cars, houses, land, industrial tools and even some car spares now only sell in dollars, something made illegal by the old Chavez regime some 20 years ago, but that people no longer give a fuck about, as even high-ranking government officials are doing the same.
So, there you have it, this is how all of us deal with cash nowadays: As a precios commodity only to be used in the most extreme of circumstances, like bus fares or police bribing, basically the things that won’t take card nor online bank transfers.
