1. Skip to navigation
  2. Skip to content
  3. Skip to sidebar
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/9201/biggest-check-ever/

Biggest check ever

January 7, 2009 by

Drawn on a Zimbabwe bank: one quadrillion, seventy-two trillion, four hundred and eighteen billion, three million dollars. Well, that’s what you get when the inflation rate is 12.5 million percent.

More on Zimbabwe here.

{ 35 comments }

Christopher Hightower January 7, 2009 at 8:45 am

The average American couldn’t fill out that check. Or imagine the local bank teller counting out that much.

Reason January 7, 2009 at 9:03 am

The date on that check is July 2008. What should the number be now?

…. and how about now?

Garrett Schmitt January 7, 2009 at 9:26 am

Wow. They have an extra line after “the sum of”.

Apparently Duly’s is a car dealership in Harare. The most surreal thing about this is that you can apparently still buy a car in Zimbabwe, and with a personal check at that!

Joe January 7, 2009 at 9:30 am

What is not surprising is that the Zimbabwe Central Bank, just like all other central banks and the Governments that back them never take responsibility for their own inflationary policies or over spending. In fact, I just went to the Zimbabwe Central Bank’s website and they are now blaming their excessive money creation on the Zimbabwe stock exchange. They claim that fraudulent checks were intercepted amounting to $60 hexillion! Here is a bit from the below linked Zimbabwe Central Bank statement:

“3.4 Between the 10th and the 20th of November,
2008, total fraudulent cheques we intercepted in
the clearing system had risen to $60 hexillion
($60,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).

3.5 The tragic reality is that this $60 hexillion had
infact been deployed on the Zimbabwe Stock
Exchange, bidding up share prices; with some
going onto the foreign exchange parallel market.”

What is even more ironic is the fact that many Americans can not seem to put two and two together. They do not see that what the U.S. Government and the Federal Reserve are doing is just what the Zimbabwe Government and their Central Bank did years ago. That is how hyperinflation starts. Link to the Zimbabwe Central bank statement (PDF file) and the website:

http://www.rbz.co.zw/pdfs/Press_Zse.pdf

http://www.rbz.co.zw/index.asp

Jeffrey Tucker January 7, 2009 at 9:33 am

Central bank is never to blame!

bill March 4, 2010 at 12:54 pm

you lie

shanenwy January 7, 2009 at 9:45 am

Has anyone notified Krugman?

ajax January 7, 2009 at 10:28 am

I love the “only” at the end of the written amount. God forbid if he is a dollar or two off here, it might through everything out of whack.

Bruce Koerber January 7, 2009 at 10:59 am

As far as I can tell that is the check used to buy a single copy of the paperback edition of Keynes’ “General Theory”!

You can tell the market has become exceedingly perverse. Why else would anyone want to exchange a worthless piece of paper for worthless pieces of paper?

William January 7, 2009 at 12:08 pm

Of all the people who should know their large numbers, I’d think the Zimbabwean Central Bank should be at the top of the list… and yet they don’t know that hexillion isn’t a word. If they’re going to say quadrillion and not tetrillion, let’s be consistently Latin and say sextillion.

Uncle B January 7, 2009 at 2:44 pm

One day soon, Americans will be writing checks like this ! The intent purpose of such inflation is to bury high debts, made earlier, in the numbers, thus robbing the lenders of any real value in return – it is a “numbers” game, that plays out every time money is printed, and Obama intends printing a Trillion dollars U.S. this year! If you are owed U.S. dollars or hold U.S.Dollars, you are about to be F**ked right up the brown spot on your purchasing power of return! This is how Yankee Doodle keeps ahead of the final payoff! This is why oil in the future will be “Purchasing Power Parity Priced” and Americans who produce little, will go to electric cars , and will suffer great sorrows during the (GRD) great republican depression! As one great American philosopher said . . . “You can fool some of the people all of the time , and all of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time . . .” and the Americans are finding out how true this is now in the GRD!

severin January 7, 2009 at 4:49 pm

What is this, 37 cents American?

Jester January 7, 2009 at 6:50 pm

Wow, this is all just a Monopoly gone so far… with cheating!

Auric Goldfinger January 7, 2009 at 10:04 pm

By the time it cashes it’s worth a peanut shell! Gives a new meaning to “the check is in the mail.”

Rocky Eades January 7, 2009 at 10:43 pm

William, a hexillion here, a sextillion there – pretty soon you’re talking about big money!

Rocky Eades January 7, 2009 at 10:55 pm

William, a hexillion here, a sextillion there – pretty soon you’re talking about big money!

Brian January 7, 2009 at 11:58 pm

I can’t make out the signature, I think it says P. Krugman?

Sara J. January 8, 2009 at 8:15 am

Having worked in the banking sector, I can only pity the poor Zimbabwean proof operators.

MatthewWilliam January 8, 2009 at 10:37 am

Just think of the spending multiplier when this cheque is cashed…

Michael January 8, 2009 at 11:51 am

So who’s the payee (“Doly’s”)?

Sounds about the market price for a gallon of milk in Zimbabwe.

HappyPanda January 9, 2009 at 7:07 am

it’s on mojo avenue!

Gamut January 10, 2009 at 12:21 am

MatthewWilliam:
“Just think of the spending multiplier when this cheque is cashed…”

That, sir, made me snort my scotch. Thank you.

Stephen Grossman January 10, 2009 at 10:47 am

If there is any justice left in the world, Krugman will be paid in Zimbabwean dollars.

And why consider him a scientist? Why not an economic technician or an inflation technician?

Shailendra January 10, 2009 at 8:30 pm

Currently the exchange rate is 1 USD = 9 326 444.00 ZWD. So that means $1,072,418,003,000,000.00 ZWD = $114986805.58206321723477887177578 USD.

Now that’s a cheque!!

Trevor January 11, 2009 at 11:14 pm

The is a CRAP load of money.

… but it’s not worth anything.

ChinaTrader January 12, 2009 at 1:14 pm

It’s a funny check, boys.
But if avoid speaking about jokes, there is a serious situation now around the world. Every nation got a shake by this economical crisis.
Hope this year 2009 will be without such surprises.

Worthy Apps January 12, 2009 at 6:52 pm

Are they USA$?

Credit January 21, 2009 at 10:52 am

Zimbabwe Ponzi Economics are not much different than American Ponzi Economics.

3rdliberation.org May 25, 2009 at 10:20 am

The Mugabe govt will point fingers and find people to blame for their own incompetances. It is never their fault as they have done “good” for their peole.
Surely no one wants to see this regime go any further.

tman February 7, 2010 at 7:30 am

That’s what you get when you let Niggers take over a country. When Ian Smith was President of Rhodesia, (before that knuckle dragger blue gum nigger) the Rhodesian dollar traded at 120% to value of the US dollar, and the country was called the “breadbasket of Africa” because you had competent white farmers that understood and executed the fundamentals of farming. Then the fucking jiggaboos came in and in true savage form and took the farms from the whites and ran them into the ground in a matter of months..their’s your history lesson kids. Time to tell it like it is and to stop fucking sugar coating everything so that we don’t offend Abe Foxman and the ADL. Fuck Abe Foxman..fucking hypocrite Kyke fuck. Palestinians are getting murdered every day by the Israeli Defense Force and he worried about someone painting a godamn swaztika on a bus in Brooklyn..

jam March 24, 2010 at 2:45 pm

why is tman being so races

Jack September 18, 2010 at 7:49 pm

Actually, pretty much ALL of Africa’s problems can be traced back to Europeans and Americans.

Jack September 18, 2010 at 7:47 pm

I’m pretty sure you’re all idiots, and you have no idea what you’re talking about.

you moron January 21, 2011 at 12:44 pm

did you really put a picture of a check with your real account number on the internet?

Jay Koech November 3, 2011 at 5:32 pm

I would like to use the picture of the check for an upcoming publication. Does anybody know the primary source of this photo? Any leads on this will be very beneficial.

Comments on this entry are closed.

Previous post:

Next post: