{"id":2410,"date":"2008-10-29T10:43:10","date_gmt":"2008-10-29T17:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lee.org\/blog\/?p=2410"},"modified":"2008-11-13T17:59:44","modified_gmt":"2008-11-14T00:59:44","slug":"its-like-printing-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2008\/10\/29\/its-like-printing-money\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Like Printing Money"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Zimbabwe has \u00a0231,000,000% inflation.<\/p>\n

The wikipedia article on the \u00a0Zimbabwean dollar<\/a> reads like a Keystone Cops comedy.<\/p>\n

A Reuters article<\/a> reads “The country’s largest bank note, a 100 billion Zimbabwe dollar bill introduced on Monday, cannot buy a loaf of bread…”<\/p>\n

On July 24th 2008, a “Second” 100 billion ZWD note could buy 3 eggs.<\/p>\n

Of course since then the currency was devalued by 8 decimal places. And continuing inflation has moved things along another 6 decimal places. Their currency has been devalued a couple times.<\/p>\n

A little quick math (that’s probably wrong, I’m no wiz at such things) tells me that 1 US Dollar could buy \u00a032,145,960,000,000,000,000,000 (yes, 3.2 x 10^24) “First” Zimbabwean dollars<\/strong> from back in 1983.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(that number calculated from here.<\/a> Here’s the ratios: First ZWD:Second ZWD = 500,000:650. Second ZWD:Third ZWD = 758,000,000,000:1,780. Third ZWD:current US dollar = 98,300,000,000:1)<\/p>\n

Thanks for the pointer Trav<\/a> and thanks for providing my RDA of absurdism Mr. Mugabe.<\/p>\n

update 11-2-08<\/strong>: Hey would you look at that. Someone on Wikipedia made a chart<\/a> \u00a0for the most part agreeing with my 3.2×10^24 estimate. :-)<\/p>\n

update 11-13-08:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Take a look at this screenshot I took of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe<\/a> \u00a0I took today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zimbabwe has \u00a0231,000,000% inflation. The wikipedia article on the \u00a0Zimbabwean dollar reads like a Keystone Cops comedy. A Reuters article reads “The country’s largest bank note, a 100 billion Zimbabwe dollar bill introduced on Monday, cannot buy a loaf of bread…” On July 24th 2008, a “Second” 100 billion ZWD note could buy 3 eggs. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2416,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2410\/revisions\/2416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}