Had to get a friend's diesel Avantage out of my indy garage yesterday because the owner was tied up. I paid the bill of £140 odd and left the car in a pay and display slot.
When the friend came to get the car he was a tenner short of the money. He had just been to see his aged mother who lives in Zimbabwe where he was raised. He gave me a wad of Zimbabwean dollars, quite a small wad really with a face value of 1,450,000,000 Zimbabwe dollars. But the Z$ lost three zeroes in a previous devaluation, so the real value from the time the dollar was worth nearly a quid was a bit short of one and a half trillion.
This sum was worth about £8 three or four weeks ago, but is probably worth less now. Dont'cha just love creative economics? I bet the Zimbabwean rank and file absolutely adore it.
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Don't be a Luddite, Lud! Better get used to the new way of running an economy - it's soon going to be all the rage in the UK!
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Bet on deflation I would, from the autumn onwards.
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So "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" is not that popular in Zim
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Some may remember the opposition hand-painted placard during the recent election in Zimbabwe, saying: 'Starving billionaire'. It's a joke all right, but a bitter one, and true.
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Lud
With inflation at 165,000%pa; the Zimbabwean dollar is now devaluing at around 50% a day - according to Reuters.
A cup of tea is apparently Z$8,000,000 - but drink it quickly, because the refill will be more....
Fortunately; Mr Mugabe's money is appreciating safely in his Swiss accounts.
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Tell me about it Screwloose...
Many years ago I was in Uganda which had suffered what then looked like runaway inflation under Idi Amin. It is called 'printing money', and that is more or less literally what it is. There weren't many visitors because the place was a bit uncomfortable, with frequent firing and everyone afraid to go out after dark (there was a curfew too, but that didn't start till 9 pm well after dark).
If you had hard currency the money was no real problem, but it was a bit scary because you had to sell cash for cash at twelve times the official rate, which was illegal and could theoretically get you run in at any time. But twelve to one is kid stuff by Mugabe-regime standards.
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I met a Caribbean buddy last night and gave him a Z$50m note as a present. He reminded me of an interesting side-issue: banknotes are quite expensively printed, in an ostensibly secure and uncounterfeitable manner, on quite expensive paper. One of the world's bigger producers of banknotes is or was Waddington's the playing card maker, which is (or was) British. Of course a firm like that is going to expect to be paid in hard currency, on delivery or even before. One can't help wondering whether the Z$ costs more to print than it is actually worth.
It's an ill wind that blows no one any good, eh? But it is strangely dispiriting to think of the Zimbabwean population being robbed to help the British economy. Call me a sentimentalist if you like.
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Screwloose - I think that your figure of 165k% pa inflation is a little out of date. I believe that the figure is 6 times that and is nearer 1m%
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