Venezuela’s is dealing with runaway inflation. Things have gotten so bad, that the government no longer even publishes inflation data. But to get a sense of where the economy is headed, one need only look at their announcement to start printing 20,000 bolivar notes in December. Currently, the largest note is worth only 100 bolivars.

Because the bolivar’s value has plummeted, the country is experiencing large scale shortages of basics, like food and medicine, and the only way to get the inflation under control may be to dollarize. In other words, the left-wing government of Nicolas Maduro would adopt the greenback as its official currency in order to stave off more inflation. This seems unlikely, given Maduro’s stridently anti-American rhetoric, but it might be the only way to stat digging Venezuela’s economy out of the hole.