A man takes notes from an official information panel on which banknotes are valid and which are not, outside the Bolivian Central Bank in La Paz on March 3.
Photographer: Marcelo Perez del Carpio/BloombergChaos Rocks Bolivia After Bank Voids $62 Million That Fell From Sky
Businesses are unsure what notes to accept, leaving customers panicked that their real money is now worthless.
When Milton Friedman pondered what would happen if a helicopter dropped $1,000 from the sky, he likely never imagined that one day a military cargo plane would scatter millions of dollars into one of Bolivia’s largest cities.
But while the Nobel Prize-winning economist worried about the inflation that an influx of cash could generate, the impact in El Alto — where a cash-packed plane crashed and killed 24 people last week while spreading 423 million bolivianos ($62 million) — is one of widespread confusion.