Venezuelan Odyssey for Cash Endures With Delay of New Bills
- With cash hard to find, Venezuelans struggle to make purchases
- New currency notes were supposed to have arrived Dec. 15
Why Venezuela's Many Crises Keep Getting Worse
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The largest denomination of Venezuela’s crippled currency was pulled from circulation before the new, larger-denomination bills were able to enter it, ATMs and wallets are mostly empty, and Christmas is just a little more than a week away.
Since Sunday’s shock announcement that (almost) all 100-bolivar notes were being called in by the government to combat the hoarding of currency so worthless that it needs to be weighed to be spent, the past week’s daily scenes of frustrated people crowding banks and automated teller machines to deposit the bills culminated Friday in utter exasperation following President Nicolas Maduro’s announcement late Thursday that the new money would be late.