K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Venezuela Forcibly Converts Pensions into Petro

Jeff Francis:

What this means is that the government decided to convert the pension payments into the Petro cryptocurrency. This was done without any prior notice or the consent of the people receiving the pensions.

Senior citizens who get a pension now have to navigate through the carnet de la patria system and find the process that allows them to convert the Petro into bolivars and then send the fiat to a local bank. (This is necessary as you can’t use the Petro for anything currently.) Needless to say, the site does everything possible make this as hard as it can be.

Compounding the issue is that people who had not signed up to be part of the carnet de la patria system found their pensions converted. This means that they have to create an account and deal with the official government website in order to access the funds they’re entitled to.