Imagine if Theresa May suddenly announced that her government was going to devalue the pound by 96 per cent; increase the minimum wage by 6,000 per cent; pay the wage increases for millions of businesses for three months; tie the pound to a mythical cryptocurrency; prepared for petrol rationing; and impose a 0.7 per cent tax on big financial transactions. It would be seen either as an act of lunacy, of a collapsing country — or both.
For the long-suffering people of Venezuela, it’s just the latest stage of their country’s grand socialist experiment.
President Nicolás Maduro has just issued a new currency, called ‘sovereign bolivars’. The original idea was that the currency would be like the old one, but with three zeros lopped off. But then hyperinflation got so out of hand that the government decided on five zeros.
Maduro’s new plan is supposed to be a big economic reset but, on its launch, those who turned up at bank machines found a withdrawal limit of ten sovereign bolivars a day — about 12p.
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