Q So there's less treatment of the corner office as currency?
In the three months between the Workers' party in Brazil winning the election in 2002 and taking office, the currency plummeted by 30% and $6bn left in hot money.
In that crime, the suspects ripped an alarm system box from the wall and ransacked the owner's office, stealing currency and several nylon bags containing cash, rolls of quarters and receipts from an unlocked safe.
What I do want to do here, however, is help my country's tourism industry by demonstrating that, in Venezuela, because of these strange and confusing economic controls, you can live like a king for an entire month with just one €100 bank note (about £75 for anyone currently planning a trip to the Post Office's currency exchange window).
The Ministry of Revenue was in charge of gathering census data, collecting taxes, and handling state revenues, while there were two offices of currency that were subordinate to it.
On Kefah Street, which is lined with the shuttered offices of currency-exchange shops, Khalid Muhammad, a money changer, said the dinar had dropped to 4,000 per dollar before the war but briefly recovered to about 2,500 dinars before sliding again to 3,500 dinars, "because the thieves have so many dinars that they have stolen from the banks and they want dollars".
Bryan Hubbard, a spokesman for the currency office, said the agency acknowledged there "were shortcomings in the O.C.C. supervision leading up to and responding to the unfolding events" with JPMorgan's chief investment office.
"This case demonstrates perfectly why our role is critical and that the banks are already using the office of the currency comptroller as a shield," Mr. Spitzer said.
Customers trying to use the Post Office's foreign currency service were met with technical difficulties, and Tesco Bank's exchange site displayed an error message.
The currency office, which oversees the nation's largest banks, is also broadly looking into the industry's debt collection efforts, focusing in part on the documents included with lawsuits.
