Zimbabwe's currency collapses | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 451005 United States 09/30/2008 06:09 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Our currency is going up - probably because of the not adding $700 billion more to the mix, right this moment. Zimbabwe Central Bank Issues New Notes In Bid To Counter Cash Crunch - Sep 29th [link to voanews.com] "Cash limit ‘inhumane’" [link to www.dispatch.co.za] Was maximum $1000 Zimbabweans dollars per 24 hours from the ATMs and banks, until today. 1 US Dollar = 126.65 Zimbabwe dollars. So the maximum you could take out is $7 and ninety fucking cents a day. Wow. They said they've raised the limit as of today to $20,000 Zimbabwe Doillar - equals $158 a day. If you have it that is. Read a story in Sunday's SF Chron about some starving Zimbabwean women --- spending all day on the sides of roads, getting bits of corn that trucks drop when passing through an area. If good, slightly less than a pound a day collected each, enough for a sparse starvation meal for them and their children. Just a step above the mud pies eaten in Haiti (Poor Haitians Resort to Eating Dirt") [link to news.nationalgeographic.com] The getting even worse part of it all - this year's harvest for Zimbabwe sucks bad bad compared to last year, and Mugabe has locked out all foreign aid. People are already starving there - the situation has been building for quite some time. Never hear about them in the news recently - Africa has become the forgotten continent, unless it's a story about the Chinese brokering a deal for mineral/gas/oil resources. I don't think the rest of the world is thinking about airlifting aid in when they're embroiled in a financial crisis. Cynically, unless it comes with mineral/oil/gas rights sold from their govt - but the starving human on the street rarely benefits. We're entering into a period of payback for excesses - it's either this, or distraction by war? It seems like the reason for the world slowdown is the unintended consequence of removing the USA out of the equation when it comes to being the churn/engine driving demand - with a lot of credit the past 25 years. We grew and led the world and buried ourselves in IOUs at the same time. Now since we tipped the pivot of not being the better investment, we have to pay it all back. The world has had no real backup for a always available stable USD (considering the amount of money of other countries vs. currrent rate) (just fuzzed the meaning of the word commodity there - oh well) [[hoping tomorrow is less interesting]] |