What it means: Venezuela's been deep in a severe economic crisis for the past five years – food shortages, no electrity, no domestic water, you name it.
They're producing less than half of what they were before the crisis – described in the press as a 'contraction' of the economy by 50%.
Prices rose by 3% a day in June. "A kilo of chicken was 3.3 million last week, 4.2 million this week," Anthony Faiola reported for the Washington Post. It's incredibly difficult to predict how things will develop, but economists are now saying the expect prices to rise by one million percent by the end of the year.
One solution to end the madness of such huge numbers being used for daily transactions would simply be to knock a few zeros off – turn 1,000 into 1 and start again. But the government is so poor it can't even afford to print banknotes, and is making electronic transfers instead.
