where to spend $1.5 trillion a day

While I collect my thoughts regarding my last couple of weeks of travel, I thought I would share this mind-boggling story out of Zimbabwe.

It’s hard to fathom what it’s like there at the moment, but this excerpt gives a small glimpse:

Reports from Harare said hyperinflation has also caused a cash shortage because the government cannot print notes fast enough to meet demand. Ordinary people are permitted to draw only Z$100 billion (36p) a day from their banks.

The government has made an exception for soldiers, fearing unrest in the military. They are allowed to take out Z$1.5 trillion a day and the cash is delivered by the banks to the barracks.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with current exchange rates, Z$100 billion is the equivalent of about $0.72 USD. No, the zero in front of the 72 is not a mistake.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s