Venezuela is striking back at U.S. sanctions by purging the U.S currency from the South American economy and instead switching to the Euro for international transactions.  

Venezuela is in its fifth year of recession, prompting the region’s largest-ever migration crisis that has overwhelmed its neighbours as Venezuelans scramble to move anywhere they can for jobs and a better lifestyle.

The Economy Vice President has pledged to see the opening of bank accounts in Europe and Asia to counteract the American financial sanctions, while adding that the country would sell around €2 million from oil revenues.

President Nicolas Maduro frequently accuses the US of seeking to sabotage his administration by sparking an economic crisis. The Venezuelan dollar hovers around 0.015 cents per American Dollar.

The United States administration and many of their Latin American allies, however, blame Venezuela’s economic meltdown on government mismanagement, reckless money printing, and poor management.

In an attempt to slow crippling hyperinflation, the Venezuelan government slashed five zeros from the Venezuelan bolivar earlier this year. But the move did little to ease economic unrest, with the International Monetary Fund forecasting inflation at 1.4 million percent this year and 10 million percent next year. In fact, Venezuela’s annual inflation hit a whopping 488,865 percent in September.

The US hit back by imposing sanctions on four key members of Venezuela’s government – First Lady Cilia Flores, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, Communications Minister Jorge Rodriguez and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino.
With the Venezuelan government now trading in Euros, what can you get if you have a spare 10,000 Euros, to invest?  

You could buy a mansion from a Venezuelan general.  Or you can buy a used car (there are no new ones) You could put it in a bank and get Sovereign Bolivar.42.000 interest monthly (Minimum wage is a little over Sovereign Bolivar..7.200 a month) which sounds like a lot of money. However, due to an inflation rate of 175% per year, your money would be worthless very quickly.
​
Last week, Sputnik News reported that China sold off $3 billion in US dollar bonds. In recent months, Russia, China, Japan, Turkey, Iran and Iraq have all ditched the dollar in bilateral trade with each other. Meanwhile, the European Union scrapped its use of the dollar when trading with Iran in order to circumvent US sanctions.

While Venezuela's move won't have a "massive impact on the economy," Dobson said, it is part of a larger trend of countries dropping the dollar in response to US President Donald Trump's hawkish economic policies.
​
A once-wealthy oil nation, Venezuela is gripped by a historic crisis deeper than the Great Depression in the United States. Many Venezuelans struggle to afford scarce food and medicine, and earn for a government that will listen to their complaints and act in their best interest.
 

Europe is celebrated as a modern hub of society, government, and progress companies. However, we still lack large firms in areas like social media, e-commerce and cloud computing comparable in scale to America’s Google and Microsoft, or China’s Alibaba.

 Of the world’s largest digital companies, all are American or Chinese. Of the top 200, only eight are European. Why is this? Why is Europe failing to innovate? Most people just assume that the US and China are more powerful economies and therefore should be ahead of Europe. But it goes deeper than that.  For starters Europe has an older, more established economy. They have companies like BMW, Volkswagen, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, UBS, and HSBC.

In the 18th century, Europe’s lack of standardisation made it the cradle of the industrial revolution.  This lack of standardisation created competition which propelled companies forward. Today, however, Europe’s patchwork is a disadvantage. New technologies require big pools of data, skilled labour and capital.

Europe’s market is supposed to act like a single cohesive unit – that was why the European Union was created – but the reality is something actually very different. Language, regulations, and backgrounds often get in the way of financing, and company goals. Vast, speculative long-term capital investments that make firms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter possible are too rarely available on European national markets.

However, there is progress. European universities are working more closely together, and the EU adopted a new digital strategy that has simplified tax rules, ended roaming charges and removed barriers to cross-border online content sales. But about half of its measures—like smoother flows of data—remain mere proposals.

The collective experience of two world wars, and communism makes many Europeans naturally protective of their data. Germans, for example, are surprisingly still behind many other nations in embracing technology.   

America’s technological superiority is built on its ability to attract talented, success-hungry people from all across the world. One look at Silicon Valley and you’ll see people from India, Germany, Japan, and Brazil.  Of the 98 high-tech firms in the Fortune 500, 45 were founded by immigrants or their children. America is a young country. While China lacks immigration, it sends many of its young abroad to study, and then repatriates their skills. European countries are very protective and most aren’t friendly to immigration and as a result no knew ideas or new talent are injected into the economy.  

If it wanted to, Europe could improve. Its governments and the EU could create a genuine digital single market, do more to promote enterprise and institutional innovation and make the most of its strengths in, for example, biomedicine and transport. Better integration of capital markets would help as well. Europeans may even eventually come to view immigration as an opportunity. But all of this perhaps demands a greater awareness of history itself, of the diverging technological pasts and possible futures hovering over the continent.

It is time for Europe to change and not cling onto its Old World ways. By embracing a faster-paced economy with less protectionism, we might see the next billion idea come from the continent.