The amount of Bolivars needed to buy 2.4 kg of chicken in Venezuela today.
Photo credit: Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters
The economic situation in Venezuela today is depressing.
That banknote was worth about USD 30 then.
But Zimbabwes hyperinflation was only the second worst in history.
Compared to the inflation in Zimbabwe and Hungary, Venezuelas train-wreck of an economy looks very amateurish.
To stop inflation, the government decided to scrap korona and introduced pengo in 1927.
A 500,000 Korona banknote issued in 1923.
We all know the fallacy of that argument, and it only pushed Hungarys economy to the brink.
At its peak, prices were doubling every 15 hours.
In 1927, when the pengo was introduced, there were 5.26 pengo to one US dollar.
Then, the pengo collapsed.
A 100 million Bilpengo banknote issued during the Hungarian hyperinflation in 1946.
To cope with the pengos falling value, the government kept introducing new currencies with every increasing denomination.
The notes had the same design but were colored differently.
The note pictures above is a 100 million Bpengo or one followed by twenty zeros!
An even higher denomination was printed (pictured below) but not circulated.
It had a face value of 1 billion Bpengo or one milliard Bilpengo.
Towards the end, the government actually ran out of good quality paper to print bank notes.
Finally, in August 1946, the government ditched the pengo altogether and decided to start from scratch.
Hungary still uses forint, but the plan is to transition to Euro by 2020.
