500 Cruzados Novos

This note belongs to the Cruzado Novo series, a currency that lasted barely a year. The Cruzado Novo was introduced in January 1989 as part of the Summer Plan — Plano Verão — Brazil's latest attempt to stabilize an inflation rate that had exceeded 900% annually. By early 1990 it was already failing, and in March of that year the incoming Collor government replaced it with the Cruzeiro, simultaneously freezing 80% of private savings accounts in the most dramatic monetary intervention in Brazilian postwar history.

Notes dated 1990 effectively circulated into a crisis rather than away from one.