L
Posted on 08/03/2007 2:52:40 PM PDT by george76
Robert G. Mugabe has ruled over this battered nation, his every wish endorsed by Parliament and enforced by the police and soldiers, for more than 27 years. It appears, however, that not even an unchallenged autocrat can repeal the laws of supply and demand.
One month after Mr. Mugabe decreed just that, commanding merchants nationwide to counter 10,000-percent-a-year hyperinflation by slashing prices in half and more, Zimbabwe’s economy is at a halt.
Bread, sugar and cornmeal, staples of every Zimbabwean’s diet, have vanished, seized by mobs who denuded stores like locusts in wheat fields. Meat is virtually nonexistent, even for members of the middle class who have money to buy it on the black market. Gasoline is nearly unobtainable. Hospital patients are dying for lack of basic medical supplies. Power blackouts and water cutoffs are endemic.
Manufacturing has slowed to a crawl because few businesses can produce goods for less than their government-imposed sale prices. Raw materials are drying up because suppliers are being forced to sell to factories at a loss. Businesses are laying off workers or reducing their hours.
The chaos, however, seems to have done little to undermine Mr. Mugabe’s authority. To the contrary, the government is moving steadily toward a takeover of major sectors of the economy that have not already been nationalized.
“We are at war,” one of Mr. Mugabe’s vice presidents, Joseph Msika, said in a speech on July 18. “We will not allow shelves to be empty.”
His June 26 decree, much of which was later enacted into law, was draconian: businesses were ordered to reduce their prices by about 50 percent. Shop owners who refused to comply would be jailed. Stores that closed or refused to restock goods would be taken over by the government.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Mugabe must be in trouble when even the ny slimes notices.
The American left will blame Bush.
Z was and can be a big profitable bread basket. This is a dramatic example of the failure of socialism. The left around the world will deny it.
Hopefully some of those who advocate ‘free’ health care will note this inconvenient truth.
I didn't mean to imply that nothing could be done, only that it will require intervention from outside sources. I for one don't want that outside source to be the United States. We shouldn't be the police force for the entire world. Your suggestion that people simply walk out of the country is not realistic.
Your tone is confrontational and I won't engage in argument with you, this is a bad situation with no easy solutions.
You may have the last word that I won't read anyway. Go for it!
God bless you and your's.
And I gave an entire spectrum of solutions, the best of which is that civilized countries refuse to allow millions of innocent human beings to be misruled by incompetent mindless savages. The next best being for those oppressed people to free themselves by force. And the least desirable but still perfectly possible, that they simply get the heck out as fast as they can, as many have before them.
Here is what should never, ever happen - civilized countries keep this sort of monster in power through handouts out of pretended moral concern for the people, when they lack the moral strength to get out of their fracking armchairs and do anything about it.
Grok?
Drink deeply of the water of life brother.
There will be cannibalism before very much longer. Not in days or weeks, perhaps, but in months.
-ccm
Is Mugabe still getting advice from Jammy Cahtah? Sounds like it.
L
Natural causes, do your duty.
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