Tuesday 27 October 2009

Zimbabwe 1, first world 0

As hard as it is to believe, some billionaires in this world don't even have a car (so don't get me started on the fact that they don't have a private jet). These billionaires are the citizens of Zimbabwe (probably the country that has the most billionaires in the world) and they are starving.

The exchange rate of the Zimbabwe dollar (ZWR) vs the US dollar is 322.35 ZWR...well, it was re-valued at a ratio to 1 to 1'000'000'000'000, so you have to add all these zeros somewhere.

The monthly inflation rate is in billion % (some say 13bn% other say 80bn%) but one thing is sure, consumer prices on everything are doubling on average every 1.3 days (so prices double every 30 hours). Just to make it crazier, Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate is of 516 quintillion per cent. That's 516 followed by 18 zeros. They better go shopping fast!

I can't help but notice how lame our financial crisis is next to that one. I mean inflation rates in the US or Europe spiked to 10 or 15% during the crisis, that's nothing! Come on banks and central banks of the first world, you can beat some poor South-East African country. You can invent some more opaque financial products, invest in a declining market (I hear cassettes are not in fashion anymore) or pay huge bonuses when you can't afford it. You better hurry because they even invented a word to qualify their inflation rate: quintillion. What do you have? I gotta say, it is so embarrassing to be non-Zimbabwean right now.

Anyway, just to add some environmentally approach to this post; can you imagine all the paper money the central bank has to print? That is so not environmentally friendly; I hope Mugabe is aware of that. He's such a dick!

1 comment:

  1. Ha! Well said...really well said. I'm not sure Zimbabweans would find it very funny though.

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