Venezuelans Give Up on Counting Piles of Cash and Start Weighing Them

At a delicatessen counter in eastern Caracas, Humberto Gonzalez removes slices of salty white cheese from his scale and replaces them with a stack of bolivar notes handed over by his customer. The currency is so devalued and each purchase requires so many bills that instead of counting, he weighs them.

“It’s sad," Gonzalez says. "At this point, I think the cheese is worth more.”

“When they start weighing cash, it’s a sign of runaway inflation,” said Jesus Casique, financial director of Capital Market Finance, a consulting firm. “But Venezuelans don’t know just how bad it is because the government refuses to publish figures.”

"Coming to a Western Nation near you!"

A few weeks ago, however, the government quietly asked five currency companies to submit bids for bigger bills -- 500, 1000, 5000, 10,000 , and perhaps a 20,000-bolivar note, according to someone with direct knowledge of the order.

"These 1 dollar bolivars they are probably more valuable as scrap metal than currency now."

"Everyone should be saving all their pre-1982 pennies and all their nickles as those will likely be more valuable as scrap during a dollar collapse in the United States. Heck, even the quarters might be worth more as scrape. Nobody knows how bad it will get but this is any easy way to save some money and protect some of your wealth if you can't afford gold or silver."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-31/tired-of-counting-piles-of-cash-venezuelans-start-weighing-them

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