Re: Want to see what happens when the world doesn't want your money?

On Mar 29, 9:05 am, Too_Many_Tools <too_many_to...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This can happen anywhere...including the United States.

I wonder if you could buy a sausage sandwich with a gold
brick...likely not.

TMT

In Zimbabwe, bread costs Z$10 million
With inflation at 100,000 percent, few can afford even basic goods.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the March 25, 2008 edition

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe - In her pink-and-yellow Indian sari, Neeti Patel
sees the customers come into her shop, look longingly at the
sandwiches, and walk back out empty handed.

It's not that her prices are high - a sausage sandwich sells for a
mere 30 million Zimbabwe dollars, or about $1.25. The problem is that
Zimbabwe's skyrocketing inflation - now the world's highest, running
at more than 100,000 percent a year - keeps her costs rising. A 30-
pound bag of potatos cost 90 million in the first week of March. Now
that same bag costs 160 million, and her potential customers simply
don't have the money.

"We have to put the prices up, but then people cannot manage to pay
us," sighs Ms. Patel, who moved to Zimbabwe with her husband six
months ago from India, assuming that this southern African nation
would present the same opportunities to her as it has for generations
of Indian shopkeepers. "But if we don't raise our prices up, we don't
see any profit. We didn't think it would be like this."

There are plenty of theories for why Zimbabwe has descended from
Southern Africa's breadbasket to its basket case. Western economists
blame the socialist-inspired redistribution of commercial farms by
President Robert Mugabe to his cronies and supporters. Mr. Mugabe's
supporters blame Western governments, which withdrew economic aid in
response to Mugabe's human rights violations. Whatever the cause, the
hardship of ordinary Zimbabweans is easy to see in their shops and
homes, and difficult to resolve as long as Mugabe and his supporters
stay in power.

"It's really frightening what the future holds for people," says Paul
Siwela, an economist in Bulawayo, an opposition stronghold. Ethnic
purges against Zimbabwe's own people, combined with attacks against
white commercial farmers has sent much of the country's skilled
manpower elsewhere. "In the last eight years, the economy has
contracted to 60 percent of what it was before."

Shifting blame?

Supporters of Mugabe, who faces the strongest-ever challenge to his 28-
year presidency in elections on March 29, blame the country's economic
woes on Britain, its former colonial ruler. But Mr. Siwela says most
of the country's problems are self-inflicted.

Economic sanctions levied by Western countries on Mugabe's regime
don't explain a huge growth in government spending which now equals
nearly 60 percent of the total gross domestic product, he says.

With a manufacturing industry now operating at just 5 percent of
capacity - largely due to a lack of reliable electricity and water -
there are fewer taxes to pay for that spending, and Zimbabwe has
fallen deeper into debt.

Most troubling, however, is the way Zimbabwe lost its ability to feed
itself, and the region. In 1979, when Mugabe's nationalist rebels
overthrew the white-dominated government of Rhodesia, and changed the
name of the country to Zimbabwe, thousands of commercial farms managed
to grow enough food to export throughout the region. Today, more than
a decade of mismanagement and neglect have dropped agricultural
production to precolonial levels.

This year, Zimbabwe's shortfall in maize is 360,000 tons, and its
shortfall in wheat is 255,000 tons. Food aid, from friendly neighbors,
from the United Nations' World Food Program, and from individual
family members living in neighboring countries, will help to stave off
starvation - for a while.

This story obviously touched a nerve.

Conservatives get angry when someone screws with their money...even if
it is Boy George.

Have you actually stopped and considered that with the 40% devaluation
of the dollar since George has been leading us off the cliff is
equivalent to a 40% tax rate...which your big bad Democrats will
likely have to apply to dig this Country out of the hell hole we are
spiralling into.

I sure wish conservatives knew more about economics than what Fox News
spoon feeds them.

TMT
.

Relevant Pages

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