Venezuelans fight to protect their savings as government pulls bills from circulation

fusion.net ^ | 12/13/2016

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

CARACAS— Venezuelans are rushing to the banks this week in a desperate attempt to protect their savings from the government’s latest spasm of reckless financial policymaking.

On Tuesday morning thousands of people across Venezuela played hooky from work to line-up outside banks and deposit bundles of cash into their savings accounts
after the government gave everyone a 72-hour countdown to turn in all their 100 bolivar notes before they’re removed from circulation.

“I’ve been saving for so long, withdrawing money every week and for what? Nothing!” complained José Orozco, who was holding a backpack full of money as he stood in line.

[PGR88]

Why don’t they overthrow the government?

Latin/Spanish culture is quite accepting of the caudillo "strong man" culture. Top-down, forced collectivism is quite ingrained in their culture.

[WayneS]

It’s not even really worth zippo. Those guys make very good lighters...

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

Ping

[ArcadeQuarters]

Hmmm. Worthless currency, lack of toilet paper... I have an idea.

[dp0622]

I just wanted to know so I knew how bad to feel for the people.

Not so much now.

[SkyDancer]

There’s a great picture of a before and after of Hiroshima and Detroit. Detroit looks like Hiroshima after the bomb.

[Boogieman]

First the people had to spend hours lining up at multiple banks because there was a withdrawal limit, so you couldn’t even withdraw enough money to buy a loaf of bread at a single bank/ATM.

Now they are going to have line up again to put that money back in the banks!

[Boogieman]

Well, Chavez was, once upon a time. I don’t think any of the elections could be said to be “fair” after that. There was one where it looked like the socialists were losing, and they just threw the results out, locked a bunch of the opposition up, then held another election where they counted all the votes themselves.

[dirtymac]

‘Why don’t they overthrow the government?’

BECAUSE THEY DO NOT HAVE ANY GUNS! ONLY THE GOVERNMENT HAS GUN! THUS A PERFECT SCENARIO FOR SOCIALIST.

You can’t continue to force this kind of sh*t on people unless you have a lot of guns and the people do not have any. They still overthrew the USSR but it was very difficult and took a lot of courage.

[TADSLOS]

Fnancial collapse and WROL. The end state of socialism every time it’s tried, and yet the powers that be still manage to always have a boogieman to blame their failures on.

[I want the USA back]

Communism is a disaster.

This hyperinflation is not bothering the ruling elite at all. They are protected from it. In other words, they don’t care that the ordinary person has lost all his life savings and is now pisspoor.

[Oatka]

I wonder about those with dollar-denominated savings accounts (do they even exist?).

I ask this because some years ago Mexico was getting ready to devalue the peso, but kept it quiet (except to the elites).

So . . . in 1994 they first seized all their nationals' dollar accounts in the banks and converted them to pesos - then devalued the peso and told the owners they could convert them back to dollars at something like a 2-1 ratio ("Have we got a deal for you!").

No wonder Mexicans, and other Latins, don't trust banks.

BTW, I looked up the decline of the Bolivar (VEF), at Wiki - I was down there in the '80s when the Bolivar was 4.1 to the USD and that was after they just did a 10-1 devaluation: