U.S. Removing $100 Bill From Circulation!

Imagine you roll out of bed tomorrow to find out that US $100 and $50 bills were outlawed and deemed worthless?  Hard as it is to believe, this is now taking place in both Venezuela and India.

It’s a war on cash. And it’s coming soon to your doorstep.

President Maduro, the tyrannical leader of the socialist paradise of Venezuela, gave a three day warning that he was eliminating his country’s 100 bolivar bank note, pictured above.

The official reasoning for the removal of these bills according to President Maduro’s statement on Venezuelan state-run TV:

"There has been a scam and smuggling of the one hundred bills on the border with Colombia, we have tried the diplomatic way to deal with this problem with Colombia’s government; there are huge mafias."

The 100 bolivar note was the country’s largest currency denomination left in circulation and was equivalent in value to $0.02 USD.

That’s down dramatically from $0.10 when I visited Venezuela in March 2016 and needed a backpack of money to buy dinner.

It’s hard to imagine that things can get much worse for the poor people of dystopian Venezuela who in many cases have had to resort to killing feral street animals in order to survive. Yes you read that correctly: Some have had to kill and cook dogs, cats and pigeons because of the limited food supply.

What is going on in Caracas, Venezuela is a modern example of the horrors of hyperinflation and the toll it can take on an unsuspecting population.

According to the IMF’s most recent estimation of the country’s inflation, the rate currently sits around 2000% and continues to grow daily - so fast in fact that restaurant owners have to update the prices on their menus almost daily.

Because of the sheer volume of banknotes which are required for daily purchases, many business owners and shopkeepers no longer determine prices based on the numerical value of the currency they receive. Instead they’ve started using scales to weigh the paper money which people carry around in backpacks instead of wallets.

Meanwhile, the currency situation in India is verging on the hardship in Venezuela.  India has now banned 500 and 1000 rupee notes, though the government has also assured the public it would print a 2000 rupee note to replace the smaller denominations. Unfortunately, that has yet to happen and - given India’s track-record - may not happen. Meanwhile, as a result of the currency chaos, poorer people are literally starving.

When it comes to currency, Venezuela is copying India by announcing that it too will issue six higher denomination notes. Thus, both of these countries have eliminated high denomination currency notes under the guise of “fighting crime” and both have promised higher valued notes in the future to fix the problems caused by the elimination of their current high valued bills.

The trouble here is that removing bills doesn’t fight crime. At least one recent study shows countries with the largest currency denominations actually have the lowest crime rates. Take for instance a country like Japan which is praised for its low crime rates and has a 10,000 yen note worth around $85 as of today.

Switzerland is a prime example of the opposite end of the spectrum because not only does it have a 1,000 Swiss franc note worth roughly $1,000 USD and one of the lowest crime rates in the world, but unlike Venezuela where guns are outlawed and violence is rampant, 1 in 2 Swiss people are gun owners.

It’s not difficult to see the correlation when you look closely at the situations in Venezuela and India - and it’s no coincidence that India also happens to have some of the strictest gun laws in the world.

Unfortunately, the reality is that we are living in an increasingly Orwellian world where nearly everything your average person thinks and believes is false.

Exactly how the financial elites want to keep it - so they can can keep plundering the masses. Don’t let them ransack your savings. Learn how to keep your money outside their game which is the monetary system and fiat paper.

It’s my opinion that what is happening in Venezuela and India are being used as test cases before rolling out fiat currency cancellations throughout the Western world.

Don’t be like most of the folks in India and Venezuela who waited until the ATMs were shut down and their cash declared worthless before taking action.

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.

While debit and credit cards can be used at stores that accept them, buying gasoline is becoming increasingly difficult because most filling stations accept only cash.

“This is terrible -- it makes you feel completely impotent!” complained Wilmer Valero, a 42-year-old heavy-machinery technician, upon visiting a fourth ATM in Caracas Friday morning. “We have money in the bank, but there’s no cash. If this is what Caracas is like, I don’t even want to imagine the interior of the country,” he said before abandoning the bank to try his luck an another ATM.

With 100s now useless, and smaller bills hard to find and practically worthless because of triple-digit inflation, Venezuelans are struggling to get the hard currency they need for daily transactions in a country where 40 percent of the population doesn’t have a bank account. The credit and debit card network, meanwhile, is infamous for its poor reliability.

“The new bills will enter in the course of this week, next week, the last week of December and the first week of January,” Maduro said late Thursday evening in a national address while displaying new 500-bolivar and 1,000-bolivar notes. He also set a final deadline of Dec. 20 to deposit any remaining bills at the central bank in Caracas.

Gas Stations

It was difficult to find anyone on the streets who had seen -- let alone touched -- the new notes. Luis Zerpa, a 67-year-old truck driver, said he visited three ATMs this morning with no luck as he waited to fill up his Chevrolet Hilux at a gas station in eastern Caracas that was no longer accepting 100-bolivar notes. He said a friend lent him 1,000 bolivars -- in a stack of 100 10-bolivar notes, each of which is only worth less than a half of one U.S. cent -- so that he could pay.

“Things are only going to get worse,” Zerpa said. “So much for Christmas. I don’t even want to think what January is going to be like.”

A shipment of new 500-bolivar bills printed by Boston-based Crane Currency at its facility in Sweden as of Friday morning was still waiting for a charter plane to be dispatched to Venezuela, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter who isn’t authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

Crane Currency and Venezuela’s central bank didn’t immediately respond to e-mailed requests for comment.

Unrest Mounts

Caracas-based newspaper El Nacional reported that protests were breaking out in southern Bolivar state, while Maracaibo-based newspaper Panorama reported that some looting was breaking out in Venezuela’s second-largest city.

In downtown Caracas, meanwhile, hundreds of people, some of them elderly and disabled, waited in lines that stretched several blocks to deposit their 100-bolivar bills at the central bank before the notes become worthless. Dozens of portable toilets were set up outside as people braced for a long wait. Police and National Guard were controlling the throng pressing to gain entry to the bank, and some departed after seeing the lines, saying they would throw the money away and take the loss.

People turning in their 100-bolivar bills directly at the central bank were given a piece of paper saying that they could collect the new bills once they’ve arrived in about five days at a branch of state-run Banco de Venezuela. They weren’t given money in return.

Carlos Palacios, a 75-year-old retiree, said he came from the coastal city of La Guaira to deposit his savings of 13,900 bolivars, which on the black market would only be worth just a few dollars.

“I couldn’t get to Caracas earlier,” he said in an interview outside the bank. “My nephew brought me today. This is tough. I have asthma. Let’s see if they let me deposit it.”

Below, protestors burn Maduro puppets.