Posted on 11/13/2007 9:39:12 AM PST by goldstategop
In Zimbabwe, where hyperinflation has reached 7,900% and people have used up their entire savings just buying food, life has been reduced to this: the queue. Go to any Zimbabwean town these days and you'll find lines everywhere, like an invasion of giant pythons slithering into every supermarket door.
Kaodza, a hustler in a country where the flour has all but run out and bread has become a luxury, gives a quick tutorial on how to get ahead in a queue. You don't just line up and wait to buy. There is an unspoken etiquette, with subtle rules. Only those in a police or army uniform get to ignore the queue entirely.
For people such as Kaodza, queuing is no mere dull necessity; it's become a business. They are master queue tacticians, managing to be in line in three or four places. They reserve themselves a place at the top of the queue, scamper to the end and reserve themselves a place there by making a deal with the last person to let them back into line later. They wait for the queue to build up a little more and scurry to grab another place at the end.
According to local etiquette, you can leave the line, but never for long. To rejoin, you need the recognition of the person you made an agreement with. But if you neglect to pay the guard in charge of the queue, you still won't be able to creep back to your place, Kaodza says.
"It's every man for himself. Sometimes you say you were in the queue and you just came back and someone says, 'I didn't see you.' And you're just canceled from the queue."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
But hey, they got rid of whitey! All right!
I wonder what Jimmah Carter thinks?
Jimmah says "let them eat cake peanuts"
countries that continue to ignore all that western civilization has accomplished, and continue to enslave their people, ignoring the truth of judeo-christian principles....will continue to be ‘killing fields’.
Airdrop turkeys!
Coming soon to the United States at the rate our dollar is plunging versus world currencies.
And at the same time, the world is turning foodstuffs into fuel - even as there is plentiful fuel and supplies.
Zimbabwe wasn’t ruined by having a crashing currency. Zimbabwe was ruined because Mugabe’s state stole the property of the wealth-makers AND made sure that anyone who did create wealth was penalised for it.
No country can come back from that. There can be no more wealth in Zimbabwe until property is assured - that’s why their currency is worthless. The laws of the Market can never be repealed.
America is rich and is producing loads of stuff. Your people are getting richer and richer and you’re awash with credit. The only problem I can see is these sub-prime bad debts wished on you by the Clintons. And since the UK Govt decided to underwrite bad CDOs brought off American banks, its our problem too :0)
As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
“Jimmah says “let them eat cake peanuts”
If he does, it would be one of those stopped-clock moments where he’s actually right.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1914592/posts
“Zimbabwe wasn’t ruined by having a crashing currency. Zimbabwe was ruined because Mugabe’s state stole the property of the wealth-makers AND made sure that anyone who did create wealth was penalised for it.”
Wasn’t that part of the world considered a “bread basket?” Weren’t the farms, that boobby mugabe stole for unproductive squatters, capable of producing enough food-stuffs to feed the country and export?
stoopid communists!
Wild ones, yeah [although they prefer to walk]. Domestic? Too stupid.
"Oh the Hugh Manatee!!!!"
Part of the reason our currency is dropping like a stone is the lack of confidence in our country as a result of borrowing huge amounts from the rest of the world to prop up our country with easy credit, and then shipping the garbage overseas in the form of CDO’s and SIV’s. When you and the Chinese and the Swiss, and the Germans, and Arabs realized our Grade AAA debt in mortgage backed securities was a fraud, the loss in confidence in our banking system has quickened the pace of the dollars decline. Our easy money policy under Greenspan was analagous to lending a crack addicted doctor more money to feed his habit in hopes we would get back to making money in his profession, and thus pay you back,. In the end, the doctor lost his practice, and had no money to pay you back. You and the rest of the world are stuck with IOU’s from these CDO’s which were created and sold as ‘safe’ investments, but in reality were not worth the paper they were printed on.
Heard on the radio this morning that the most recent figure is 14,800%, doubling from last month.
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