they thought a one BRAZILLION dollar note was simply over the top... let alone it wasn't worth the paper or ink it was printed with
Posted on 07/22/2015 10:10:35 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
The glory days of being a millionaire, billionaire and even quadzillionaire are coming to a fast end in Zimbabwe.
The African country’s central bank on Monday will begin a “demonetization” program to work 100-million-dollar, 100-trillion-dollar and other eye-popping bank notes out of circulation, and swap them for clean, less zero-y U.S. dollars.
For every 175 quadrillion, or 175,000 trillion, Zimbabwe dollars, locals will get $5 in exchange. For 250 trillion Zimbabwe dollars, you get $1.
The country has been largely using the U.S. dollar and the South African rand since a decade of hyperinflation — it peaked at 500 billion percent in November 2008 — pretty much collapsed its currency. As central-bank governor John Mangudya told Bloomberg: “We cannot have two legal currency systems. We need therefore to safeguard the integrity of the multiple-currency system or dollarization in Zimbabwe.”
Currently, Zimbabwe’s inflation rate is minus-1%, according to the International Monetary Fund. But the country remains deep in the economic woods, with huge external debt and a mining sector that’s roundly criticized for a lack of transparency, and at the mercy of global commodity-price trends.
As for that $5? In Harare, according to Expatistan, a liter of whole milk is about $1.48, while a Big Mac-type meal will set you back $6. That doesn’t seem so bad, except that the average wage is about $253 a month — that is, for the 30% of the population that’s employed, a figure reported by New Republic earlier this year.
Zimbabwe is also in the club that Greece is trying to avoid. That is, it defaulted on its debt to the IMF back in 1999 and has been on a monitoring program ever since.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
The people there probably learned math better than most Americans ever learn math, considering the calculations they had to do to buy a loaf of bread.
>>The people there probably learned math better than most Americans ever learn math, considering the calculations they had to do to buy a loaf of bread.
Especially considering that, with 500 billion percent inflation, by the time they finished the calculations, the price had changed.
Yea, I was thinking the same - compound interest, compounding inflation. Not to mention scheduling and prioritization. The moment you receive money you have to SPEND IT, or its value drops in half, overnight - so which store first, how do you get to each one efficiently.
Lots of skills that people are very much lacking in, in this country.
That’s what the get when “black lives matter” and white ones don’t. Hopefully Obama will move there and become their “dear leader” and can make matters even worse for them.
I wish them the worst. They deserve it.
molebuck LOL. awesome. Ya know, they recently added an extra digit of precision to the mole. There was an FR article about it.
they thought a one BRAZILLION dollar note was simply over the top... let alone it wasn't worth the paper or ink it was printed with
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