Zimbabwe introduces new $50 billion note

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/01/10/zimbawe.currency/index.html

by dcurtis • 18 years ago

47 66 18 years ago

cnn.com

opticksversi4• 18 years ago

Zimbabwe (British-relative) national IQ: 66

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_IQ#National_IQ_and_QHC...

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

Zimbabwe president: Robert Mugabe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe

I'm pretty sure their government has much more to do with the hyperinflation.

opticksversi4• 18 years ago

I'm pretty sure their government has ... to do with the hyperinflation.

Indeed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Zimbabwe

Land reform in Zimbabwe began after the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979 in an effort to more equitably distribute land between ... blacks and the minority-whites who ruled Zimbabwe from 1923 to 1979.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Zimbabwe#Economi...

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

mynameishere• 18 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man

Not really a theory in the best repute.

acangiano• 18 years ago

That tells you more about the inadequacy and bias of the IQ system in measuring and representing intelligence, than it tells you about African people.

quantumhobbit3• 18 years ago

I might be feeding a troll here(2 day old account - http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=opticksversi ) but IQ is more a measure of a nations current economic development than something inherent in the population. See the Flynn Effect - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

opticksversi4• 18 years ago

the inadequacy and bias of the IQ system in measuring and representing intelligence

Why do you believe there is inadequacy and bias in mental ability testing (the IQ system, as you put it)? Have you read this Citation Classic on the subject?:

http://www.amazon.com/Bias-Mental-Testing-Arthur-Jensen/dp/0...

sdfx• 18 years ago

What a strange attempt to solve their problems. Maybe there is something wrong with your system if you can't print money fast enough to keep up with inflation.

iigs• 18 years ago

In August last year, the RBZ slashed ten zeros from the currency. But the zeroes have bounced back with more vigor.

That means in before August 2008 these would have been 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 notes. Yikes.

quantumhobbit3• 18 years ago

When will they start using scientific notation on the notes? I'd invest a few dollars at whatever exchange rate just to get a hold of some $10^23 notes.

LogicHoleFlaw• 18 years ago

That'd be just about a mole of currency. Yikes.

mhartl• 18 years ago

It would be simpler just to switch to a log scale.

wheels4• 18 years ago

It's amazing how thoroughly has been completely destroyed in the last decade. What I think most first-world readers miss is that Zimbabwe is not one of those (previously) ultra-poor, undeveloped countries -- it's had a frighteningly long fall to get to where it is now.

dcurtis• 18 years ago

Yeah, it used to be considered a model African country, with the highest increases in standard of living year/year of any country in the world.

Robert Mugabe destroyed Zimbabwe.

Wikipedia has some really excellent further reading on Mugabe and Zimbabwe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Zimbabwe

jwilliams4• 18 years ago

IIRC, before Land Reform Zimbabwe was the only African country with a net surplus of food. Zim used to be called the bread basket of Africa.

Putting aside the ideology of Land Reform (that's a whole other minefield of a topic), the execution and economic policies have been woeful.

Another post quoted one issue which was that large tracts of land were broken up, which broke economies of scale. However, it was flawed in a lot of other ways.

The original owners of the land were highly captialised. The people receiving the land often had no experience in cultivation, and even if they did, they had zero capital. They couldn't buy seed, machinery, expertise. The money and expertise required to turn this around pretty much fled the country.

So large farms that produced vast quantities got broken up into small farms that produce almost nothing.

At one stage Zim was in talks with China to have Chinese workers come over and work the land. I don't think that ever came to be, but China is a big player in Zimbabwe still - a lot of tourism, aid, weapons and immigration (several million?) comes from China.

Anon84• 18 years ago

Getting rid of Mugabe and reinstating private property rights would go a long way in the right direction.

wheels4• 18 years ago

It'd be a start, but sadly just that. That's what's truly sad. The economic destruction has been so thorough, the wave of emigration away so massive, that Zimbabwe will need a generation or two to recover.

markessien9• 18 years ago

Hyperinflation is caused by external countries refusing to invest in a countries currency, not by internal factors. So the current problem with money they are having is controlled by external entities.

ars• 18 years ago

I don't think that's correct, but I'll give you chance to post some citations backing that up.

gravitycop8• 18 years ago

Mars has never invested in Earth currency. Therefore, and because of that, the Earth economy must have continuously experienced hyperinflation.

vaksel• 18 years ago

How can an economy survive with such an inflation? How can you work, knowing that the salary you agreed to at the beginning of the day, is now worth 10 times less

DougBTX• 18 years ago

At 80% unemployment, I guess they don't.

quantumhobbit3• 18 years ago

I'd imagine a sort of barter system takes the place of the currency. You could also try to rely on foreign currencies.

jwilliams4• 18 years ago

They actively crack down on those using foreign currency, it's actually illegal to use foreign currency for transactions there - although of course everyone does and there is a massive black market for this.

Mugabe also tried to fix the price of common goods - e.g. Bread, Milk, etc.

ii• 18 years ago

Salary is in foreign currency. As everything else.

mattmcknight• 18 years ago

Hello, gold. Mugabe can't inflate it unless he's a real alchemist. I wonder if the US could get into this sort of situation?

eru• 18 years ago

Gold is somewhat impractical. Having access to a lot of foreign currencies (on the black market, if necessary) is a substitute.

mattmaroon• 18 years ago

Damn, just when I bought the $25 billion of eBay.

quellhorst• 18 years ago

You can already see discontinued $100 billion notes for sale on ebay... 10 for $40

callmeed• 18 years ago

How long until they have a trillion dollar bill like the one Castro stole from Homer?

kirubakaran• 18 years ago

http://preview.tinyurl.com/ebay-100B

There seems to be $100B note. What am I missing?

mncaudill• 18 years ago

May have something to do with it being a "special agro-cheque", though knowing nothing of Zimbabwean currency, I'm not sure.

maneesh• 18 years ago

They cut 10 zeros from the currency in august---100B was converted into whatever 100B/10^10 is, and they restarted from there.

ckinnan• 18 years ago

The world badly needs a hard currency that is independent of political control.

mixmax• 18 years ago

Keep dreaming..

iamnotwhite• 18 years ago

The tragedy of Zimbabwe is that a functioning, wealth-creating capitalist system that was evolving towards equal rights for blacks over time was sacrificed to satisfy the ego of a strong man, who proceeded to wipe out every trace of capitalism and rule of law, and replaced it with the law of the jungle. Zimbabwe's whites mostly left, so it is the black population that paid the biggest most terrible price. Naipaul has chronicled this process in his books very well.

As a member of an once "inferior" race, I can state with confidence that we were not inferior, we were just behind in adopting the institutions and cultural patterns of modernity. The whites were teaching us that - by example that we could watch and emulate every day. A gradual process of assimilating those values would have served us well. Kicking the whites out took that opportunity away.

Yes, none of this politically correct. That doesn't make any of it wrong either. Yes, there are white racists. Fuck them - they could not have stopped us from learning. Only we could have, and we did.

birdseyeview• 18 years ago

Are you sure you are not white? Or at least,...antipc?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=411138

And you and I both know who he really is, don't we, longtimer?

[EDIT: Rechecked your facebook page. Yep, still white.]

jpcx01• 18 years ago

There's a lesson to be learnt here. Printing money = Inflation. I know it seems obvious, but the Federal Reserve has printed about 800 billion dollars so far, and if our government ends up with a 2 trillion dollar deficit in the next few years, we're going to be seeing the same phenomenon.

It wasn't that long ago (1970s) where inflation in US was 10-15%. Our population has short memories, and we seem doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past (vast government spending relative to revenue).

robak• 18 years ago

Read it very carefully. This is USA in the future. 800 bilion bail-out - printed, over 1 trillion budget deficit - printed, another 800 billion bail out - printed. Only 5% of all the US dollars ever created is in circulation in the US. Rest of them are deposited in banks of the rest of the world as I.O.U.s... treasuries (us gov debt) that was bought by foreigners. The very moment foreigners realize that Treasuries have negative R.O.I. - as it will become true once treasuries bubble bursts and Fed starts printing to pay them off... well, this is how the whole Communistic Block collapsed in matter of months - hyperinflation due to inability of repaying debts. The exactly same thing will happen with the USA. Nation with no production, no savings and the biggest debt in the history of the man-kind... this country is going bankrupt. Kaput!

abalashov• 18 years ago

The interesting thing is that there is probably considerable potential for the population of Zimbabwe to earn foreign hard currency by selling bank notes of this kind of denomination (for example, on eBay, if possible) simply because so many Westerners would find it incredibly novel to obtain one, just for the sheer amazement factor.

It's an economic opportunity to take advantage of just how bewildering the situation is.

ca98am79• 18 years ago

man, my site is totally worthless now http://www.millionzimbabwedollarhomepage.com

Zimbabwe introduces new $50 billion note

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