Posted on 05/21/2008 9:19:12 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
HARARE, Zimbabwe - Weary Zimbabweans are facing a new wave of price increases that will put many basic goods even further out of their reach: A loaf of bread now costs what 12 new cars did a decade ago.
Independent finance houses said in an assessment Tuesday that annual inflation rose this month to 1,063,572 percent based on prices of a basket of basic foodstuffs. Economic analysts say unless the rate of inflation is slowed, annual inflation will likely reach about 5 million percent by October.
As stores opened for business Wednesday, a small pack of locally produced coffee beans cost just short of 1 billion Zimbabwe dollars. A decade ago, that sum would have bought 60 new cars.
And fresh price rises were expected after the state Grain Marketing Board announced up to 25-fold increases in its prices to commercial millers for wheat and the corn meal staple.
The economy was on shop clerk Jessica Rukuni's mind as she left the public swimming pool in downtown Harare's central park with three disappointed children. She found the new admission price of 100 million Zimbabwe dollars 30 U.S. cents out of reach.
"The point is that it's far too much for most people who don't get U.S. dollars," she said.
Her income is the equivalent of about one U.S. dollar a day, and her family has one basic meal daily.
The collapsing economy was a major concern of voters who dealt longtime President Robert Mugabe a defeat in March 29 elections. His challenger, Morgan Tsvangirai, topped the poll but did not win the simple majority needed to avoid a runoff. The two face each other in a second round June 27.
Mugabe was to officially launch his runoff campaign with a rally at his party's headquarters in Harare on Sunday, the state-run Herald newspaper reported Wednesday.
The opposition's campaigning has been hampered by violence blamed on Mugabe's government and party. The opposition claims Tsvangirai is the target of a government assassination plot and he has been out of Zimbabwe since shortly after the March 29 first round. He plans to return to Zimbabwe to campaign for the runoff once security measures are in place, his aides have said.
Mugabe, speaking as he reviewed graduating police cadets Wednesday, said the opposition was fanning violence. Independent observers have said that while there have been some retaliatory attacks by the opposition, the vast majority of the attacks have been carried out by Mugabe supporters.
Mugabe accuses the United States, the European Union and especially former colonial ruler Britain of using their economic influence to back his opponents and bring about his ouster. He has severed ties with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other financial organizations.
Zimbabwe's official annual inflation was given by the government as 165,000 percent in February, already by far the highest in the world. The government has not updated that the state statistical service has said there were not enough goods in the shortages-stricken shops to calculate new figures.
The economic decline has been blamed on the collapse of the key agriculture sector following the often violent seizures of farmland from whites. Mugabe claimed the seizures begun in 2002 were to benefit poor blacks, but many of the farms went to his loyalists.
"The crunch is going to come when local money is eroded to the point it is no longer acceptable" in commercial activities or as earnings, especially by longtime ruler Mugabe's loyalists, said independent Harare economist John Robertson.
Already, more transactions are being done in U.S. dollars, both openly and in secret.
Manufacturing industries, running at below 30 percent of their capacity, reported growing absenteeism by workers facing soaring commuter bus fares.
He doesn’t have the guts to give him a “stern talking to”. He will more likely mewl and beg and whine.
Compounding 20% per week price rises implies an annual rate of the headlined 1,000,000%.
Just think, if you had a couple bucks in your hand, you’re a billionaire over there. Truly a worthless currency.
Think of it this way.
In what other country can milllionaires complain that they aren’t being paid a living wage?
This is what happens when your currency is not based on a firm foundation. It is a lesson that we are not learning!
Obama and company would like to duplicate Comrade Bob’s achievements in forging an Afro-socialist utopia in this country as well.
I’m sure Jimmy Carter is proud of his legacy.
Barter will only work for smaller things. You can’t trade onions for electricity. The cities are poised to collapse back to pre-industrial times, and there’s nothing Mugabe’s “war veterans” can do about it except to set up their own little medieval fiefdoms. Mugabe won’t realize this until the mobs start trading HIS stuff. No hope now, even if South Africa and other neighbors decide to remove him.
OMG, WE ARE ALL GUNNA BE RICH!
GET THE FIRE ROARING!
Going to the store to buy candy. LOTS OF CANDY!!!
Paying for lunch.
Hey, someone dropped their change.
LOOK! People in Zimbabwe are so rich, they build their homes out of money.
They are so rich, they bought EVERYTHING in the store!
Clearly, this is the key to prosperity.
Am I wrong, or has every single African government that went from white colonial rule to black indigenous rule has become a complete disaster?
The only workable system there is barter, and
Barter will only work for smaller things. You cant trade onions for electricity.
They stopped having any semblance of a real financial system since they hit a "mere" 100,000% inflation months ago. At this point it's pre-civilizational substinance existence, with perhaps something like cigarettes or some other easily traded item as a defacto currency until someone starts frm scratch.
And this is our future if we elect Obama or Hitlery!
You could probably sell a Zimbabwe million dollar bill as a curio for a buck easy on Ebay.
There is money to be made here I think...
Given the history of the UN, including electing the worst rights abusers in the world to the Human Rights Commission, I've been deadened to the idiocy. I'll whistle and walk away.
No, Mali is a good example of an African country that has done fairly well since the end of colonialism. Tanzania and Kenya have troubles on and off but are fairly stable. Even Botswana and Burundi are starting to gain traction.
It’s just the “big” ones like Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Congo (Zaire), and South Africa that have made all the news.
If a country is fairly stable, it doesn’t make headlines.
Damn skippy he was, and there are volumes on the subject that the MSM doesn’t want to remind you of.
Here’s a primer:
http://www.nysun.com/opinion/carters-role-in-zimbabwe/58232/
In April of 1979, the first fully democratic election in Zimbabwe history’s occurred. Of the eligible black voters, 64% participated, braving the threat of terrorist attacks by Mr. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party, which managed to kill 10 people. Prior to the election, Mr. Mugabe had issued a death list with 50 individuals he named as “traitors, fellow-travelers, and puppets of the Ian Smith regime, opportunistic running-dogs and other capitalist vultures.” Nevertheless, Bishop Abel Muzorewa of the United Methodist Church emerged victorious and became prime minister of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, as the new country was called.
Yet the Carter administration, led by the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, would have none of it. Mr. Young referred to Mr. Muzorewa, one of the very few democratically elected leaders on the African continent, as the head of a “neo-fascist” government. Mr. Carter refused to meet Mr. Muzorewa when the newly elected leader visited Washington to seek support from our country, nor did he lift sanctions that America had placed on Rhodesia as punishment for the colony’s unilateral declaration of independence from the British Empire in 1965.
Messrs. Carter and Young would only countenance a settlement in which Mr. Mugabe, a Marxist who had repeatedly made clear his intention to turn Zimbabwe into a one-party state, played a leading role. Mr. Young, displaying the willful naiveté that came to characterize Mr. Carter’s mindset, told the London Times that Mr. Mugabe was a “very gentle man” whom he “can’t imagine ever pulling the trigger on a gun to kill anyone.”
Mr. Mugabe already had pulled the trigger on many innocent people, though. And not long after taking power in 1980, he killed about 25,000 people belonging to a minority tribe, the Ndebele. In spite of this, in 1989, Mr. Carter launched his “Project Africa” in Zimbabwe, a program aimed at helping African countries maintain food sustainability.
Now, however, the Carter Center maintains no programs in Zimbabwe. There is probably more of a reason for this than simply due to Mr. Mugabe’s recent ban on foreign aid groups.
1,063,572 percent
Yes but they are no longer oppressed by the minority. I bet that takes the sting out of 1,063,572 percent inflation.
/sarcasm
Zimbabwe introduces half-a-billion dollar note
AFP on Yahoo | 5/15/08 | AFP
Posted on 05/15/2008 11:41:50 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2016440/posts
One woman’s extraordinary bravery
is a haunting rebuke to world that is ignoring Mugabe’s genocide
The Daily Mail | 15th May 2008 | PETER OBORNE
Posted on 05/18/2008 2:46:10 PM PDT by forkinsocket
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2017790/posts
12 dead as South Africans turn on foreigners (horrifying photos)
NewZimbabwe.com | 05/18/2008 18:26:29 | By Celean Jacobson
Posted on 05/19/2008 2:54:47 PM PDT by dead
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2018300/posts
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