Zimbabwe's reality check

[bushi]

...In continuing the tradition of our "Reality check" threads, here's interesting interview with one guy from Zimbabwe, about how it is under the rule of the TRUE masters of fiat money printing.

I find couple of his points very similar to what we used to have in Poland in the 80's - black market of foreign currencies (when people lost faith in government's fiat)

Bear in mind, that this kind of nonsense is only possible in more or less totalitarian countries (that is unfortunately including US of A of today), because in free societies, people would turn to something else, that replaces government's fiat run amok, freely and much earlier.



"at some stages, calculators were not big enough to help people tocalculate"

"each store, nearly everyone had a money counting machines (...), but they got overrun eventually as well (...) and we ended up WEIGHING trillion dollar bills, to pay for goods - so the prices were, like, 100g of 100 trillion notes will got you a leaf of bread"

 

[pmbug]

Former Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono says he was forced to print money even when he knew it would cause hyperinflation because the government was desperate to forestall a coup by hungry soldiers.

Gono, who retired in 2013, told the Mashonaland West Business Conference in Chinhoyi last week that cash was used to pacify the troops.

"If we had not done what we did printing money and allowing inflation to skyrocket, then the men and women you see in those beautiful uniforms, they were ready to get out of their barracks," he said.
...
Gono said he never had the resources to do his job during his tumultuous tenure at the central bank.

"I was given a car, which did not have fuel and expected to get to a certain destination. You drive on empty. ours was not an ordinary situation, ours couldn't be compared to any other country or any other situation," he said.

"Any attempt to get money was met with blockages.

"Faced with a situation that we were in, we chose to allow inflation to go the way it went as long as we preserved the lives of our people."

Gono said most of the time they could not tell Zimbabweans the truth that the country had no fuel or medicines fearing unrest.

https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-national-byo-134280.html

Sounds a lot like current day Venezuela, except I think the people there are pretty well aware that they are FUBAR.

 

[pmbug]

Zimbabwe will introduce a new currency in the next 12 months, the country’s Finance Minister said, as a shortage of U.S. dollars plunges the financial system into disarray, forcing businesses to close and threatening unrest.

The southern African nation abandoned its own hyperinflation-wrecked currency in 2009 at the height of an economic recession, adopting the greenback and other currencies including sterling and the South African rand.

But without enough hard currency to back up the $10 billion of electronic funds trapped in local bank accounts, businesses and civil servants are demanding payment in cash which can be deposited and used to make payments both inside and outside the country.
...

More: https://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL8N1ZC056

Cash? Who needs it?

 

[searcher]

I cannot verify the veracity of the article. DYODD

White farmers in Zimbabwe live and die with the toxic legacy of Mugabe’s brutal land grab​

Philip Rankin had long hoped for compensation after his family farm in Zimbabwe was seized because he was white, but cancer caught up with him first.

The 65-year-old farmer died in early December, nearly seven years after he was handcuffed and forcibly removed from his farm by truckloads of police from Robert Mugabe’s government.

Like many of the thousands of white Zimbabwean farmers who have faced the same fate since Mugabe’s farm invasions and takeovers began in early 2000, he found life difficult without the land his family had farmed for more than 30 years.

Mr Rankin found work for a few years but then developed cancer. His widow, Anita said: “I hoped he would be well enough for us to take him outside to see the sun one more time. But that didn’t happen.”

More:

MSN