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from the toilet-paper-is-worth-more dept.
In a surprise announcement, [President Nicolas] Maduro said on Sunday that the 100-bolivar note, worth about 2 US cents (£0.015) on the black market, would be taken out of circulation on Wednesday.
The president said the aim was to tackle transnational gangs which hoard the Venezuelan notes abroad, a move he has in the past described as part of the "economic war" being waged against his government. [...] He said part of the plan was to block any of the 100-bolivar notes from being taken back into the country so the gangs would be unable to exchange their hoarded bills, making them worthless.
"I have given the orders to close all land, maritime and air possibilities so those bills taken out can't be returned and they're stuck with their fraud abroad," he said speaking on television.
Venezuela's currency has fallen dramatically amid skyrocketing inflation.
[...] Analysts say the move is likely to worsen the cash crunch in Venezuela, where people have already been limited in the amount of cash they can take out at automated teller machines. Venezuelans have only been given 10 days to exchange their 100-bolivar notes for new coins and bills ranging from 500 to 20,000 bolivars due to be introduced from 15 December.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday December 14 2016, @04:40AM
In that case removing the notes from circulation will only improve Venezuela's position since the gangs can't recoup any of the value.
The gang would have already lost most of the value in the currency because of inflation. And it wouldn't be long anyway before there would be utterly no point to doing anything at all with the money since they would have to transport it to some black market in order to sell it.
Thus my point that the excuse for this proposal is ridiculous. No one is insane enough to think that they can undermine an inflating currency by buying it up and smuggling it out of the country. And even if they were that insane, they would run out of hard currency quickly.