The paper currency in one popular national commune has become so worthless that the only use it has left is something to wrap your gold dust in. When customers want to pay for their purchase at the pharmacy in Tumeremo, they have to shake a few flakes on the scale until the pharmacist smiles.
Prices marked in gold
In today’s Venezuela, particularly the town of Tumeremo in Bolivar state, prices of products at the market are “displayed in grams of gold.” Ever since the Maduro regime trimmed “another six zeros” off the paper currency, called the Bolivar, anyone with a 1 Bolivar bill in their pocket just became a millionaire. The problem is that it’s not even much good as toilet paper. Locals say it’s too scratchy.
Joe Biden’s radically socialist plan to embrace the Venezuela model of climate change prevention justifies every dire word all those late night precious metal investment commercials hammered out relentlessly, for decades.
Hyperinflation seems to be Joe Biden’s favorite word. He wants to spend our way out of bankruptcy, just like Venezuela did.
The financial collapse isn’t as apparent in the oil fields of Caracas but travel “over the Orinoco River, and head deep into the savanna that blankets one of the remotest corners of the country” and you’ll learn what Socialism is really like. If you want to stay overnight, half a gram of gold will make the inn keeper happy.
All the barber shops, restaurants and hotels “that constitute the main strip of one dusty little outpost after another” post their prices by the gram. Lunch for two runs a quarter of a gram.
A haircut will set you back an eighth, which is the rough equivalent of $5 American. “You can pay for everything with gold,” 20-year-old Jorge Pena explains.
Rendered almost worthless
Tumeremo is a special case because there happens to be gold in the ground around there. The placer fields have been picked clean before but desperate residents are back for what the last big rush missed. It’s there to be found, just harder to find and tougher to get out.
In places where the precious metal isn’t available, the good old U.S. dollar “has become the de facto choice in Caracas and other major cities.” For now, that is. the dollar might not be worth more than the Bolivar if the big Democrat spending packages get passed.
Along the western border with Colombia, they don’t have gold or dollars so they exchange Columbian pesos as the dominant currency and it’s “used in more than 90 per cent of transactions in the biggest city in the region, San Cristobal.”
The situation is the same along the nation’s souther border with Brazil. They use reals and euros there. Cryptocurrency is gaining popularity with those who have access to electricity.
Having a stack of gold and silver coins in your pocket is the best way to get along in Venezuela these days. Everyone is convinced that the Bolivar “no longer fulfilled its function” as “a store of wealth or a means of accounting or a medium of exchange.”
Only the poorest of the poor use the paper currency. “People simply stopped trusting the bolivar.” The same could happen soon to the dollar. If not the yellow stuff that glitters, you can always make do trading the canned goods and ammo.