Life in Zimbabwe: Wait for Useless Money

[tpsbmam]

Source: NY Times

Zimbabwe is in the grip of one of the great hyperinflations in world history. The people of this once proud capital have been plunged into a Darwinian struggle to get by. Many have been reduced to peddlers and paupers, hawkers and black-market hustlers, eating just a meal or two a day, their hollowed cheeks a testament to their hunger.

Like countless Zimbabweans, Mrs. Moyo has calculated the price of goods by the number of days she had to spend in line at the bank to withdraw cash to buy them: a day for a bar of soap; another for a bag of salt; and four for a sack of cornmeal.

The withdrawal limit rose on Monday, but with inflation surpassing what independent economists say is an almost unimaginable 40 million percent, she said the value of the new amount would quickly be a pittance, too.

...............

Economists here and abroad say Zimbabwe’s economic collapse is gaining velocity, radiating instability into the heart of southern Africa. As the bankrupt government prints ever more money, inflation has gone wild, rising from 1,000 percent in 2006 to 12,000 percent in 2007 to a figure so high the government had to lop 10 zeros off the currency in August to keep the nation’s calculators from being overwhelmed. (Had it left the currency alone, $1 would now be worth about 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.)

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/world/africa/02zimbabwe.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

[greenmutha]

1. My boss recently returned from a safari in Zimbabwe.

He brought me a souvenir - a One Hundred Billion Dollar bill from the Bank of Zimbabwe. It was worth about 50 cents American when he left that country. He said that the Zimbabweans had to take "stacks and stacks" of bills to the store just to buy a loaf of bread!

[mainegreen]

2. The sad thing: as long as the presses keep running, things will only get worse.

And the presses show no signs of slowing.

[tom_paine]

4. Of course. That's why the Bushies stopped publishing the M3 - Total Money Supply

Like the Soviets, they just dropped it out of sight.

So the foreign suckers can't see how badly we are rooking them, so soon after we just rooked them out of a few trillion dollars now existing s McMansions, Porsches, and Cayman Islands hidden accounts.

Like in the 1930s, where the world continued appeasing Hitler and the Nazis, the world once again insists on placating and appeasing madmen, if they gain unchecked control of a powerful nation, as they have in Amerika.

Like in the 1930, when Hitler and Himmler, Heydrich and Ilse Koch, could have been stopped early on, the world had it's chance to stop Bush and Cheney, McBush and Palin. It chose appeasement instead.

And the results will likely be the same in the end. Millions ruined and killed. The world in flames, and the world shaking it's head at Bush and Cheney, saying the same thing it said when Hitler and Himmler were defeated, "We were mad not to stop this before it got out of control. Millions of lives could have been saved. We must NEVER allow this to happen again.

Of course, humans being human, with Bush and Cheney they DID let the exact same thing happen again, DID follow the same strategy of appeasing criminal madmen.

With likely the same result or something close, in terms of unnecessary human pain and suffering...AGAIN.

And if there is anything left after this installment of "Madmen Take Over a Formerly Free Nation and Turn It to Evil Totalitarianism; World Appeases Them" some years from now, it is a certainty the world will say of Bush's Amerika what it said of Hitler's Germany:

"We were mad not to stop this before it got out of control. Millions of lives could have been saved. We must NEVER allow this to happen again.

But of course, humans being humans, there is really only one outcome that is almost certain. When the next Hitler or Bush, Himmler or Cheney, comes along and seizes a free powerful nation in the grip of tyranny, it will promptly forget and being the appeasing.

99% certainty. That is IF there is anything left of the civilized organized world or our nation left after BushCheneyMcPalin gets through with it.

[Robbien]

5. IMO, as long as the elite of the world can make a dollar off the situation

they have a strong interest in not interfering. In fact, as long as the costs can be passed off to the masses, they are the driving force behind their governments appeasing the US.

[tom_paine]

6. That dovetails nicely with my point. Thanks for the reply.

Yes, the Elites can't stop themselves. Liquidating the middle-class and crushing the poor and having their Bushies lock everything down so the suckers have no chance even AFTER we realize the swindle, must be like pure heroin shot into the veins of an addict.

I mean, even if I sort of contemplate the situation of the Amerikan Aristocracy, even as the whole thing is going down in flames, slow-motion (perhaps as slow-motion as 30 years -- if the Bushies can somehow finish transitioning us to tyranny while keeping the nation still running -- we could become like the Romans and our tyranny last HUNDREDS of years before our the descendants of our victims come back seeking their pound of flesh), just THINKING about the situation of the Bushie Rich in this country and PRETENDING that I am one, sends a massive and immediate rush of pleasure hormones to my brain.

I mean, think about it. As a Bushie Rich Person, it's back to 1400 AD for you, but WITH antibiotics and enough surveillance equipment along electric fencing to make sure the peasants stay in line.

Think about it:

Wealth Maldistribution is at a recent high, and may well rival some medieval kingdoms (the poor were poorer, but the Bushies were also poorer during the Dark Ages...so everything is relative)

Laws are becoming MUCH easier for the Bushie Rich to break, even shamelessly in broad daylight. Oh, the protection is still far from 100%. Bushie Criminals still take the same risks ordinary criminals do. But as all Law Enforcement becomes as Bushie-Criminalized as the DOJ, this risk fades every day.

What chance a "friendly Bushie" will tank the investigation and frame a patsy for you, like they did for the REAL Bushie Anthrax Mailer when they covered up for him and framed the corpse Ivins? Probably still small, but growing every day the Bushies cement their control over our agencies.

Need I say that ALL of these aspects increase proportionally the closer an aristocrat is to the Bushie Inner Circle? Democratic Aristocrats, get the nonviolent version of the "Jews in Nazi Germany" treatment. As in:

We can steal TRILLIONS and walk away scot-free, but you'd better not get caught doing what millions of men (and women, for that matter) do every day, rent a hooker/gigilo...or you're ruined like Spitzer. Better not cheat on your wife, like Vitter and his diapering hookers, or you're ruined, like Edwards.

Meanwhile, exposed Diaper Fetishists using hookers, such as David Vitter, or closeted gay Bushies passing squares of toilet paper under stalls get to keep on as if nothing happened. BOTH will probably return to the Imperial Senate. And you can stick Idaho's homophobia where Larry Craig likes it, because BUSHIE CULT FOLLOWERS DO WHAT THEY'RE TOLD .

80% chance Craig returns to the Senate.

Anyway, back on topic. What a rush to be a Bushie Aristocrat these days! Better maybe since 1920. Soon, unless we can turn this thing around, it will be better than in the 1400s for Bushies (our descendants get the peasant's end of the medevial stick in exchange).

Within just a couple more decades, I prophecy, Bushies will easily and frequently get away with everything up to and including murder (I am speaking of the Abramoffs and the Neys here...one day even THEY won't go to jail...if these trends remain unreversed), and some RW Bushie Death-Sqauds will most-likely be active, murdering liberals and gays and other Troublesome Upstarts.

Not too many, though. As Rove knows, too many liberals wind up dead for no good reason and even the Amerikan Subject Populace might start asking questions. So look for Rovian "kinder, gentler" Nazi-like twists with plenty of Plausible Deniability built in to confuse the suckers.

What a rush of power! (shivers) No wonder they can't stop. Like the old song says EVeRYboDY wants to rule the world.

No wonder they can't stop, even if they KNEW as we do, what it's leading to.

The same way a heroin addict will ultimately kill themsleves with the drug, even if they still retain enough sense to watch it and know what thge outcome is to be.

[Robbien]

8. The same situation is happening all over the globe

Whether one is in Russia, China, UK, Canada, Mexico or just about every country, the elite are destroying the judicial systems and citizen's rights in order to keep their partying going strong.

Which is also why other countries are the supporting US dollar and US aggression.

And also again, which is why they are directing so much anger at places such as Venezuela.

[formercia]

9. "The Capitalist will sell us the Rope that we will hang them with."

V I Lenin.

But then, they screwed the pooch too.

[tom_paine]

11. Oh, the Bolsheviks were screwed before they even started.

Not just by the human nature that says absolute power corrupts absolutely but the absolute unworkability or the Marxist model in terms of it's lacking incentivization beyond the warm fuzzy glow of helping your fellow human being. And the Soviets, weren't even doing THAT, they were murdering millions and terrorizing millions more.

Not a big Lenin fan, here. Big Lennon fan. NOT a big Lenin fan.

[Critters2]

14. A lesson for us, as well. nt

[pattmarty]

3. Time to save the day, bring on the shock doctrine.............

..........Oh, you say, no oil in Zimbabwe? Or, no gold? How about at least some wheat? Nothing at all? Oh well, fuck 'em then.:sarcasm:

[cobalt1999]

7. I'm surprised they haven't revolted and killed Mugabe by now.

Soon even his army and security forces won't have any food, then he's either off on an exile or dead.

[formercia]

10. He and Junior can move in together in Paraguay

and have a good laugh on us.

[Piewhacket]

12. But for corruption and mismanagement, zimbabwe would be a prosperous country.

sound familiar?

[Critters2]

15. It was when I was there. The breadasket of Africa. Corn and beef,

seemed pretty comfortable to this girl from Iowa. And a beautiful country with kind and generous people.

What a great tragedy.

[Critters2]

13. Unbelieveable! When I was there in 93, it was 4 Zimdollars to 1 dollar US.

I remember, because the Zimdollar coin looked like a quarter to me, and was worth a quarter. Made the math easy!

I feel so for the Zim people.