Greetings, everyone. I have not had any more mental lapses since Monday. I am glad the blockchain was invented, though, and that I have posted so much personal crap. If I lose my capacity to remember things, at least I’ll have some 2 years worth of memories here on Steemit.

Speaking of worth…

This is my entry to the #freewrite 5-minute exercise hosted by @mariannewest. See details here.

Bill Planes

I have very fond memories of paper planes. They were some of the very few things my father taught me how to make and actually accompanied me to play with. On a windy day, our planes could really fly. On a rainy day we turned them into boats and had competitions along the gutters. We could get a lot of paper on the local grocery store with the smallest of our coins. Now we don’t even have coins. I wonder if we are the only country in the world that doesn’t. You’d need a sack of coins to buy a lollipop.

Coincidentally, I found myself making paper planes today. Only these planes were not made of regular white paper (that’s way too expensive now); they were made of actual bills, bank notes. Of course, when adjusted to inflation, these must be the most expensive paper planes in history. 5,000,000,000 Bs were about 1 billion dollars back in the 70s.

I was going to wash my backpack and I found a couple of 50s forgotten in one of the many internal pockets. There were also some 100s, which will not make it to the end of the year. A bus fair is one thousand Bs already and that makes it really cumbersome for drivers to handle so much cash of so little value. I like these paper planes. They are colorful. Unfortunately, like our economy, they can’t fly, they sink.

[end of five minutes]

I even made a video making the plane with one hand.

Last time I talked about my country’s currency and how hyperinflation was making the entire monetary system disappear was back in March (https://steemit.com/powerhousecreatives/@hlezama/the-bolivar-fuerte-soberano-x-a-mosquito-killer-currency). By then, the Bs/$ exchange rate was 3,900. Today, it is 42,000 (every dollar is worth 42,000 Bs). In that 8-month-old post, which you must check and watch the video where I explain the whole thing, I burned different bills and announced that the 20Bs bill was about to get out of the market.

Well, now we can burn the 50s and 100s. They are worth nothing. The president recently said that he is ok with the fact that most transaction are now made in dollars and Euros; a dollarized economy is not that bad, after all, especially when dollars and Euros is all government officials have. So much for popular sovereignty and the decline of savage capitalism.

Thanks for your visit

---

Visítanos en: www.equipocardumen.com.ve