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I really can't understand how this article misses entirely the actual news here "Venezuela is issuing a full new set of notes and is replacing 100 VEF bills (t
by firekvz 10y ago
I really can't understand how this article misses entirely the actual news here
"Venezuela is issuing a full new set of notes and is replacing 100 VEF bills (the biggest we had) for a coin"
So far we had this (in VEF):
- Coins for: 0.05, 0.1, 0.125, 0.5 and 1
- Bills for: 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100
now we will have (in VEF):
- Coins for: 10, 20, 50 and 100
- Bills for: 500, 1.000, 2.000, 5.000, 10.000 and 20.000
So thats about it, the gov is finally accepting that we have a huge inflation and the old bank notes can't be used any more (in terms of convenience) so they are exchanging our current biggest bank note of 100 for other sizes but is nowhere mentioned in the article
Of course all the previous bank notes (from the old set) are being banned because they are being taking out of circulation mostly because the DESING IS THE SAME (just a recolore) and can cause confusions, here you can see a comparation:
- old desing: http://runrun.es/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/venezuela-bolivar-fuerte.jpg http://runrun.es/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/venezuela-boliva...
- new desing: http://imgs.globovision.com/2Io-ZrCgwYEjgOw-dGsi6ndh1WM=/700x0/smart/e3ccb1d95ed74a8a919e4bec4f0c2375 http://imgs.globovision.com/2Io-ZrCgwYEjgOw-dGsi6ndh1WM=/700...
In resume this is actual good news for venezuelans because even tho we still suffer all the problems we have, at least we get to avoid carrying 1 kilo of 100 VEF notes to make a purchase, we can just pay with 1 20.000 bill.
- toast0 10y ago> Of course all the previous bank notes (from the old set) are being banned because they are being taking out of circulation. Being taken out of circulation doesn't require being banned. Plenty of US currency is no longer circulated but it's still legal tender. Pre-Euro currency is no longer legal tender, but many notes and coins are still exchangable for Euros, almost 15 years after Euros were introduced.
- firekvz 10y agoYeah you are right but it's just how they did it in here. They gave people 15 days to exchange the bank notes for smaller ones or deposit their old notes in the banks or exchange for new ones, we can all agree that this looks like a really small period of time but due to the nature of our economy it's actually a decent time. But the bill is not really "banned" it will be tho and I will explain you the reasons a bit later. In my case, I deposited all my 100 notes without any problems by monday. I just use debit/credit cards now and other small notes to make cheap purchases. It's incredible hard to find actual correct information on whats going on because all the media is focused in creating chaos and missinformation, this is an actual good source where you can see the explanation of why only the 100 notes are being replaced on this 1st phase http://www.analitica.com/economia/canje-de-billetes-en-banca-publica-y-privada-se-extendera-10-dias-mas/ http://www.analitica.com/economia/canje-de-billetes-en-banca... But an small resume is that only the 100 VEF notes are being replaced now because they represent the biggest percent over all the notes (is around 50%) so people will want to have a bill of 20.000 instead of 200 bills of 100 VEF. Once the 500, 1.000, 5.000, 10.000, 20.000 notes are around, they will finish replacing the other small notes 10, 20, 50 and 100 leftovers for coins. But well, as I said before, the media has started a campaing to make people belive that right now their money will have no value at all and a bunch of other lies, this of course leads to desperation and to problems like we had today where there was violence at diferent banks around the country. And to explain why the bill will be banned after 15 days is pretty simple, the money in this country has a super high rotation, bills NEVER sit in your pocket or your wallet for more than 1 hour, aditional to this, money in cash is barely used now, a huge percent of the transactions are made electronically because is just not confortable to have a pack of 300 bills to buy food for 3-4 days so cash is actually not really used because of high inflation So yeah if after 15 days you still have bill leftover you pretty much were into corruption, drugs, money laundering, smuggling, etc and thats exactly what the gov wants to avoid, to all those guys who spend years smuggling in the borders and have containers or warehouses full of 100 VEF notes. Take a look of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p23Fn1LVGv0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p23Fn1LVGv0 This is an asian guy (well known to have smugglings business) showing how many 100 VEF bills he had, it's just hillarious.
- x0x0 10y agomy god, if those aren't fake, that's hundreds of cubic feet of 100 VEF bills.
- aftbit 10y agoWhy was the bill banned before any of the new bills were ready to hand out? Also, I'm not sure I buy this "secret media campaign" hypothesis. Hyperinflation does not end well.
- ZenoArrow 10y agoHyperinflation only ends when you restore trust in the currency. Venezuela supposedly has massive problems with black market trading. If you can cut down the influence of the black market you can restore goods being bought and sold using the local currency, which will slow down inflation. I'd suggest that's what the Venezuelan government is trying to do.
- petertodd 10y agoHow does revoking the legal tender status of part of the local currency supply help with the black market if the black market is using something other than the local currency?
- ZenoArrow 10y agoThink about it from the perspective of someone in the black market. If I accumulate Bolivars I can have greater control over the local market, slowing down the velocity of trade, creating artificial scarcity. By creating artificial scarcity I'm then able to increase the demand for goods on the black market, which is where I make my money. The losses incurred by hoarding increasingly worthless currency can be offset by the profits made elsewhere. By changing the currency to make it more practical, it's possible to encourage more people to trade in Bolivars. The more people trade in Bolivars the less people need the black market. This latest move isn't a silver bullet, but it probably is a step in the right direction. More work will be needed to ramp up production of goods for the local economy.
- edgarvaldes 10y agoMexico did the same in the 90s, but old and new currency coexisted for a while as legal tender.
- maplechori 10y agoMueve tres ceros. Los nuevos pesos \o/
- x0x0 10y agoI'm not trying to critique your english (and thank you for sharing this comment), but for everyone who can't figure out -- desing == design. I really thought desing was a verb but just couldn't figure out what.
- mst 10y agoI've found it to be a fairly common typo - design's last two letters are (for me at least) typed with index fingers and it's trivial to transpose them. (here's hoping people who weren't already aware find both of our comments useful ;)
- int_19h 10y agoThey did that exact thing in the USSR in 1991 - removed 50 and 100 ruble banknotes (the two largest) from circulation - presumably because there were a lot of fakes floating around, and the legitimate ones were heavily used in money laundering. Except they gave people 3 days to exchange any that they had, and it was announced at 9pm on the day immediately preceding that 3-day period. The end result is that they effectively took out 14 billion rubles from circulation - i.e. country residents were collectively robbed of that amount of money. A similar thing was repeated in 1993, except with a 2 week timeframe to exchange. When such procedure is done properly for legitimate reasons, the timeframe is usually set to several years.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago>"When such procedure is done properly for legitimate reasons, the timeframe is usually set to several years." If you're trying to crack down on money launderers, 2 years is far too long. You want to make it hard to disguise high levels of hoarding. Whilst I don't doubt that some of that 14 billion rubles took money out of the pocket of normal citizens, perhaps it also hints at the size of the problems that the government was trying to address.
- petertodd 10y agoNo money launderer is going to be holding Venezuela's worthless hyperinflationary currency. They've be holding other assets that are actually worth something.
- ZenoArrow 10y agoThere's a video shared in this discussion that seems to suggest otherwise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p23Fn1LVGv0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p23Fn1LVGv0
- petertodd 10y agoGiven how crazy the hyperinflation has been, that could easily be just a factories payroll, sadly. Frankly, I'm dubious about anything the Venezuelan government says, as are my Venezuelan friends. Seems much more likely that this is a classic case of a oil export dependent government being hit by low oil prices and being unable to implement spending cuts (understandable given the political consequences).
- thnnb 10y agoMan, our intelligence service (SEBIN) -really- should spend a bit more on English classes. Just kidding. But seriously, what I can't understand is how this comment misses the -actual- news here. Here's the other side of the picture: The actual, recent ground news have been reported mostly on Twitter because our media is intervened by the goverment. A small sample: A bank, looted. https://twitter.com/AndrewsAbreu/status/809937243280441344 https://twitter.com/AndrewsAbreu/status/809937243280441344 Another. https://twitter.com/guasdualitotv/status/809918995512037376 https://twitter.com/guasdualitotv/status/809918995512037376 Protests on a government bank. With smoke. https://twitter.com/MiguelCardoza/status/809892935181496320 https://twitter.com/MiguelCardoza/status/809892935181496320 The people are angry and despairing on the streets. This measure essentially makes 100 Bolívares bills useless, which were becoming scarce in previous months, so people naturally stockpiled them. You can't even buy a small pack of chewing gum with the highest denomination bill, so obviosly these stockpiles were big. This was done especially by the elderly, who don't understand / have trouble understanding ATM machines and electronic operations. People are doing street-spanning queues to exchange those bills. A queue for exchanging banknotes at 10PM. https://twitter.com/fmonroy/status/809955687333789696 https://twitter.com/fmonroy/status/809955687333789696 Another photo: https://twitter.com/AleReportando/status/809981094925860864 https://twitter.com/AleReportando/status/809981094925860864 I've heard about people crying on the streets, afraid of their savings dissapearing in thin air. > "the gov is finally accepting that we have a huge inflation" No, it isn't. There's ZERO recognition of the goverment on this. The party line is that this measure was necessary to "attack bill trafficking mafias on Colombia and other countries" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/12/venezuela-pulls-most-common-banknote-from-circulation-to-beat-mafia https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/12/venezuela-pull... > "this is actual good news for venezuelans because even tho we still suffer all the problems we have" Problems which were caused by the government to begin with. This is essentially a ham-fisted solution to a problem the bolivarian revolution created out of ideological dogma and fiscal irresponsability. Foreign exchange controls, printing money like if there were no tomorrow during previous years, institutionalized corruption, nationalizing industry and then crashing production. This is our situation here. I'm usually just a lurker on HN, but your apologist tone makes my blood boil. If other HN netizens have questions or want more details I'm willing to answer them.
- 10y ago
- petertodd 10y agoIf Venezuela just wanted to make using the currency more convenient they'd have no reason to revoke the legal tender status of the old notes so quickly. In Canada for instance, we've replaced the one and two dollar bills and removed the penny from circulation entirely in my lifetime, yet they're all still legal tender. Ever note issued since 1935 is still legal tender. Equally, they appear to be running late on actually introducing the new notes - some ATM machines are reportedly even still issuing the old (now worthless) notes, and others just don't work.
- rafaelm 10y agoYou conveniently miss the part where people are losing money and savings because they cannot exchange the bank notes they had at home before the deadline ends. 30% percent of the population here does not have access to a bank account and cannot deposit the bills. Are the people living in the most remote parts of the country supposed to make the journey to Caracas to the Central Bank to deposit their money? What are they going to pay the bus ticket with? The worthless paper they are now holding? Are they supposed to travel with a bag full of cash in one of the most dangerous countries in the world? If you live here in Venezuela you know most workers get paid on Fridays in cash. Now , most are left holding a bunch of worthless paper just because Maduro decided to play improvisation with the economy once again. Those workers now have no money to pay for food till monday. Why did the government lie and say that the new bills would be in every bank on the 15th? Turns out they just arrived yesterday! The new bills weren't even in the country. Just a small sampling of their incompetence.
- gus_massa 10y agoHi from Argentina. We change money every 10-15 years, so we are use to strange things. This is very strange. When we change money we usually have a longer period while both kind of bills are valid. For example, now we have two designs of the ARG$100(US$7) and ARG$50(US$3.5) for political reasons and two designs of the ARG$10(US$0.7) for security reasons. They are used together and the ATM can provide any of them at random. The two ARG$100(US$7) bills have coexisted since 2013 and there is no problem. We also have ARG$2(US$0.15) bills and coins since 2011 without problem. Actually all the ARG$2(US$0.15) bills are very old and not very well conserved, so you must treat them carefully to not destroy them, but you still can use them. So it's very fishy that they are forcing to put all the bill in the bank with a in a extremely short time. I suspect something shady like a Corralito, but I still can't discard plain stupidity. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corralito )
- rafaelm 10y agoAccording to the government, this was done as a surprise measure to stop the mafias taking the bills to Colombia as part of the "Economic Warfare" (that convenient excuse for our failed economy) that is being waged against Venezuela. Lots of people are talking about a Corralito here. The people exchanging their bank notes in the Central Bank in Caracas are only receiving a voucher saying that they deposited their money there! Those that cannot make the trip to Caracas or don't have access to a bank or bank account are basically screwed. There is a theory that since the dollar black market rate was increasing every day, the government did this as a way to collect all that money in the streets as a way to stop it. The government insists on blaming all our problems on external factors, it's never their fault. But no one ever thinks if it would actually be possible for an "evil actor" to influence the economy of an entire country via twitter or mafias, like they constantly say.
- tmbsundar 10y agoEven in India, it's not "demonetization". Even though the word demonetization is used loosely, it is actually "remonetization" and "really a currency swap where you could have exchanged your old notes in a certain period and also you still have time to deposit all your old notes in all the banks till the end of the year. -> Old notes which are now invalid: 500, 1000 -> New notes introduced: 500, 2000 There are plans for new 1000s to be reintroduced and new 100s etc., also to be introduced.