$800,000,000 a gallon.

[Nickodell]

How'd you like to pay $80,000,000 for a gallon of 87 octane?

OK, OK; that is Z$, not US$. Zimbabwe (ex-Rhodesia) has an inflation rate around 100,000 percent (and rising). Since the dictator Mugabe took over 28 years ago, one of the most prosperous and bountiful countries in southern Africa, a large exporter of food, is now a beggarly, starving chaos, with total starvation only postponed by massive imports of food.

What does a 100,000% inflation rate mean? A neighbor of my sister's works for the relief organization Oxfam. This is part of a letter he sent to her last week:

"On Tuesday last the official exchange rate was Z$17 million to the Pound Sterling. The next morning it was Z$19million. By the afternoon it had reached $13 million. A single cigarette costs Z$500,000. (The currency was revalued three years ago, knocking three zeros off the end. Otherwise that ciggie would cost Z$500 million, not thousand).

"At independence in 1980 the Zimbabwe dollar was one of the strongest currencies in Africa. At that time, Z$350,000 would buy you a mansion in the best part of the capital, Harare. Today it would get you a fifth of a can of Coke. The downward trend began 15 years ago when Mugabe and his party officials began the systematic siezure of white-owned farms that were highly productive and employed hundreds of thousands of black Zimbabweans, and gave them to his loyal friends. Most of them lie derelict now.

"As the vast majority of the country struggles just to survive, and one third of the country's citizens have left, Mr. Mugabe and his cronies in the ruling Zanu-PF party, who are determined to steal last month's election which it was obvious they had lost, are living lives of luxury, and salting their loot away in Switzerland."

 

[mikephillips]

Zimbabwe will someday be in Economics textbooks I suspect. The graft, corruption and wholesale printing of money in ever larger denominations, along with the policy of blaming the US and Britian for the results have created a situation unlike anything almost anyone now alive has ever seen. Only Weimar Germany in the 1920s comes close and they weren't willing to beat and kill as many of their own people as necessary to stay in power.

 

[Nickodell]

Weimar Germany is probably the only other country that ever saw the same kind of inflation. My grandfather on my mother's side was a merchant navy captain. In the 1920s he commanded a couple of tramp steamers that shuttled from port to port in Europe picking up and delivering freight. Delivered freight in Hamburg, say, had to be paid for in currency other than German marks.

German people would receive their week's wages on Friday morning, and by the afternoon it would have half the buying power. People would get paid and at the first opportunity immediately rush into the street to buy something - anything - because that was the only way to keep any purchasing power. Say you bought a pair of men's shoes for 12,000 marks at 10am. By the time you left to go home they would be "worth" perhaps M25,000. With that you could exchange them for food for dinner.

Money became essentially meaningless and worthless; people would take a suitcase of bills to buy a loaf of bread, and most stopped using it and bartered everything, including their labor and skills. Say you are a paper hanger [incidentally, Hitler wasn't. That is a popular myth. He was a house painter, but that meant he was a would-be artist; he drew and painted houses. From that, "house painter" became "paper hanger." But I digress.] You have a customer who wants 6 rooms in his house papered. He is a tailor. For the work on his house he makes you a new suit. Another customer is a grocer. For the same kind of work he supplies you with food. And so on.

I used to collect stamps as a kid. One of the ones my grandpa brought back from Weimar Germany was a Five Mark one. Overprinted Five Million Marks.
People's savings were wiped out in months. The smart ones, who saw this coming, bought gold or diamonds while the mark was still worth something. Jews tended to mistrust paper money in any case, and often kept their savings in gold or gems even when time were OK. This was one of the reasons why the Nazi message to the German people in the 1930s, that all their troubles were caused by the Jews, found receptive ears.

 

[howard]

Hitler was a SORRY artist... clumsy, overworked his watercolors, and got the perspective wrong on his buildings. No wonder he couldn't get accepted in the university. Too bad. Maybe history would've worked out better for many millions of WW2 casualties if he'd had some talent.