In retrospect, this could be the most important economic event of 2017. The oil-rich country of Venezuela has stopped accepting the U.S. Dollar as payment for oil. Last week President Maduro warned that the country would this week ‘free’ itself from the US dollar. “Venezuela is going to implement a new system of international payments and will create a basket of currencies to free us from the dollar.” Yesterday Venezuela temporarily suspended the sale of U.S. dollars through its Dicom auction system. This (and other moves) was in response to U.S. sanctions put in place by the Trump administration.