Dixy

Someone's email account bill, this is for two months:

> Dear Client
>
> The bill is roughly 4 quadrillion and 3 trillion 2 hundred billion.\
>
> Kind Regards
> Blessed Mupandawana
> MWEB Zimbabwe Limited
>
> PaSangano Building,
> 20 King George Avenue,
> Avondale,
> Harare,
> Zimbabwe
>


It puts a new perspective on financial figures

skizziks

And in US dollars, that´s what? 1,000,000,000 zimbabwe dollars = US $20,642.0. so damn, wow. internet sucks in rhodesia, i mean zimbabwe

BadNick

I hope they have enough left over for food and water.

healer

AAARGH!! Zimbabwe has infiltrated the TFP now too?!

/craziness

But seriously, you try living adjacent to a country that is as fucked up as Zim and not lose it just a little bit. It's on the news everyday, their inflation rate is something like a million and a half percent, they still don't have a functional government - even after their farce of an election a few months ago. And noww they want old Thabo Mbeki, who's been trying valiantly to sort something out, to step aside in his role as mediator. I mean come the fuck on.

They buy their petrol from us, but it's cheaper in Zim than in S.A. That should say it all.

Fuck Bob, fuck Morgan.

/rant

And now they're infecting my country with Cholera.

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MSD

The official inflation rate is in the millions of percent while the actual number is in the billions. Their currency is printed with expiration dates.

Zodijackyl

In the spring of 2007, the numbers being reported internationally ranged from 5000% to 125000%. The government statistics were only two digits.
I'm not sure how the official figures have changed since then, but the situation hasn't improved at all.

healer

What does a Zimbabwean do when he comes across a wheel-barrow full of Zim dollars?


Tips it out and runs away with the wheel-barrow.

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Leto

I don't get how that can happen. How can a country's currency be that out of wack with the rest of the world? Is this the only country where this is happening? As I understand from my history, such inflation occurs when the government merely prints new money without restraint.

All I can say, is there must be a fairly rigourous underground economy where the real industry is happening.

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MSD

Ban all imports and exports, make it a capital offense to take the national currency out of the country, and pay for everything out of your offshore accounts, and you can fuck up the exchange rate. Their GDP is zero

Dixy

Zimbabwe produced food on the farms, but they have been forcefully taken and given to "war veterans". Now they produce very little food.

BTW farm claiming is still happening. Apparently you just need to hammer a peg in the land and then the farmer needs to go to court to defend his farm. Needless to say it costs diesel and time. Also while the owner spend the time in court, his wife and children are alone on the farm with militant claimers.

Pity, they have a wonderful climate for farming, but the people who know how to produce food, was/is chased off the land.

BadNick

After posting something about the Zimbabwe dollar in the "be careful what you wish for thread" I was searching around for more reports/facts about the situation in Zimbabwe and this wiki info seems to reasonably summarize the "land reform" problem causing disasterous famine and economic collapse:

The results of the post-2000 land reform have been disastrous for the economy of Zimbabwe. Prior to land redistribution, land-owning farmers, mostly white, had large tracts of land and utilized economies of scale to raise capital, borrow money when necessary, and purchase modern mechanised farm equipment to increase productivity on their land. The reforms broke this land into smaller tracts (thereby destroying the economies of scale) and gave it to former black farmworkers and peasants, who had little knowledge of how to run the farms efficiently or raise productivity. Further, the refusal of banks to lend them money has limited their ability to purchase equipment or otherwise raise capital. As a result, the drop in total farm output has been tremendous and produced widespread claims by aid agencies of starvation and famine. However, Mugabe's expulsion of the international media has prevented full analysis of the scale of the famine and the resultant deaths. What is not in dispute is that a country once so rich in agricultural produce that it was dubbed the "bread basket" of Southern Africa, is now struggling to feed its own population. A staggering 45 percent of the population is considered malnourished. Foreign tourism has also plummeted, costing tens of millions of dollars a year in lost revenue.

Many observers view land reform as an essential component of decolonization. Since mainland China's economic reforms led by Deng Xiaoping, land reforms have also played a key role in the development of the People's Republic of China. What remains controversial in Mugabe's Zimbabwe is the manner of the land reform, its haphazard nature, and the widespread suspicion that it is being used to reward Mugabe supporters and attack his opponents, with others, including thousands of blacks who worked the white-owned farms and those experiencing famine, losing out.

As of July 2008, Zimbabwe suffers from widespread food shortages, the world's highest official inflation rate at 231,000,000% and a bitter political struggle often turned violent between the ruling ZANU-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, whose members have faced imprisonment and torture. Domestic and international critics lay much of the blame for the current chaos at the feet of the land reform program. Many Zimbabwean refugees have fled to South Africa or Mozambique.

Dixy

Here are the names of the figures Zimbabwe is dealing with:


Zimbabwe currency .

million 6 zeros 1 000 000
billion 9 zeros 1 000 000 000
trillion 12 zeros 1 000 000 000 000
quadrillion 15 zeros 1 000 000 000 000 000
quintillion 18 zeros 1 000 000 000 000 000 000
sextillion 21 zeros 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
septillion 24 zeros 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
octillion 27 zeros 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
nonillion 30 zeros
1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
decillion 33 zeros
1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000

genuinegirly

Oh my. What a mess. Octillion? geesh. One place I'm glad that I'm not living.

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3GPositive

I met someone in a bar from Zimbabwe last year. He was a farmer that employed about 100 local people. He didn't just employ them he built their houses, fed their kids, paid their medical bills etc. To him they were like an extended family. All had their houses burned down. His own family had been attacked and relative in another town had been killed. He fled the country with his wife and kids leaving his parents behind. He was black.

mrklixx

Woohoo! I am currently a zimilllionaire!

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Nimetic

Now the poor bastards have Cholera. WTF can be done.

You'd think that somebody would take an army over the border and sort this mess out. Not that things are that easy, I'm just exclaiming.

Under the implied current roadmap, the world simply waits for them to starve to death.

roachboy

LRB · Mahmood Mamdani: Lessons of Zimbabwe

this is a very good overview of post-colonial zimbabwe from the latest london review of books.
it's too long to post here, i think: but it's well worth reading.

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Glory's Sun

I have to admit, I didn't really know much about the situation in Zimbabwe until I saw a benefit concert that Dispatch held in MSG for ..you guessed it.. Zimbabwe.

The main thing I took from the whole concert was how happy the Zimbabwe musicians and drummers were despite how terrible things were for their families back home.

I doubt Americans could do the same.

Anyway, I just don't understand the how's or why's this happens.. or why nothing seems to be getting done in order to stabilize the economy.