Finally there comes a very small amount of economic sense out of Zimbabwe. According to the BBC, the new Finance Minister (one of Mugabe’s loudest critics) has blamed the Central Bank for the world’s highest inflation rate.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/9442/zimbabwe-finance-minister-blames-central-bank/
Zimbabwe Finance Minister Blames Central Bank
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The oddest thing is that to a Westerner such as myself, that stack of money makes that kid look filthy rich. It is completely incomprehensible to me how useless that paper is.
Bernanke and Krugman are the same kind of fools as the advisors of Mugabe.
Will Obama make the same mistake?
Are those rubberbands holding that cash together worth more than the whole pile held by that boy?
Yeah by now those rubber bands would be worth more than the money.
Imagine having a savings account or a pension fund there.
Until the new Zimbabwean finance minister calls for a free banking system (let us throw the full-reserve requirement for good measure), I will greet such news with neutrality. To blame central banking for hyperinflation is easy. The real question is the solution he will be proposing. While it is a good start to see where the cause of the problem is, it is not helpful if you point to the wrong solution.
Naturally, I don’t expect him to call for the abolition of the central banking system. But technically, Zimbabwe practically doesn’t have a functional central banking. At least, the government’s control over the money supply is virtually nonexistent. Which leads me to this question: would it take a collapse in the dollar for the US government to give up its control over the money supply?
I think that kid is on the way to buy a piece of gum. You can tell because he doesn’t have any of the $100,000,000,000,000 notes.
That picture is probably from 2 weeks ago, since we only see $200,000 notes.
to bruce:
sadly, mugabe and co aren’t fools. his tools of expropriation include inflation, when outright force doesn’t suit.
The kid also looks like he’s wearing a wry grin. I wonder if he read’s Mr. Krugman’s Wall Street column.
I thought the boy was selling toilet paper.
I hope the cameraman paid the kid in bubble gum, or something equally more valuable than the pile of paper he was holding.
“I thought the boy was selling toilet paper.”
Well that’s one use for the notes:
http://www.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/posts/Zimdollars.jpg
What an unbelievably cool photo. That will be us in the United States soon. Get your wheelbarrows ready!
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