$17 or $217??? 
Posted on 01/29/2013 3:33:05 PM PST by dynachrome
HARARE (AFP) After paying public workers’ salaries last week, the balance in cash-strapped Zimbabwe’s government public account stood at just $217, Finance Minister Tendai Biti said Tuesday.
“Last week when we paid civil servants there was $217 (left) in government coffers,” Biti told journalists in the capital Harare, claiming some of them had healthier bank balances than the state.
“The government finances are in paralysis state at the present moment. We are failing to meet our targets.”
Zimbabwe’s economy went into free-fall at the turn of the millennium, after President Robert Mugabe began seizing white-owned farms.
The move demolished investor confidence in the country, paralysed production, prompted international sanctions and scared off tourists.
After more than a decade — in which the country suffered hyper-inflation of 231 million percent and infrastructure that crumbled as quickly as prices went up — the situation is now more stable.
But public finances remain a mess and local business battles against unstable electricity supplies, lack of liquidity and high labour costs.
Zimbabwe’s government has warned it does not have enough money to fund a constitutional referendum and elections expected this year.
(Excerpt) Read more at en.starafrica.com ...
$217??????? US???????????///
Well, that’s 20 million, billion with a trillion local dollars. They’re still rich. /s
LOL...Coming to America!!!! Sooner than you stupid liberals think!!
Why? Its the Brits fault. They stabbed the Boers in the back.
That is NOT Zimbabwe.....is it?
WHAT DIFFERENCE AT THIS POINT DOES IT MAKE?!?
(perfect all purpose answer especially if delivered in a the tone of a peahen with an M-80 stuck up its....)
$17 or $217???
Not a black run country in Africa that isn’t a turd-world nation.
Which is the banana republic?
What they need is a black guy and a Jew to straighten out that mess. Have the Jew just start printing money and have the black guy convince everyone that free stuff and recovery are on the way.
No sense being greedy. I have forwarded an email to them that I received from a wealthy individual who recently died. It is worth several million dollars. I’m sure they can use the money more than I can.
You know what’s not so funny? They have $16,000,000,000,217 more than we do!
All they have to do is start minting trillion-dollar coins.
If need be, they can use old bottle caps. The theory is the same.
A. You nailed it.
2. Great name! You should sell tshirts!
Wasn’t there a white woman who posted here a while ago from Zimbabwe?
Things were horrific then; hope she’s still alive or has escaped.
The profit from Zimbawes diamond mines must go in Mugabes bank account....
Why? Its the Brits fault. They stabbed the Boers in the back.
Sadly I have no alternative but to agree with your statement. I was in Canada as an ex-pat Brit, when the struggle commenced for the then Rhodesia. I remember the demonstrations shown on television in London. How righteous and know it all were my fellow countryman. They all knew what was best for Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
I noted the progress of some of these protesters and one lives in a very neat, nice suburb of London. I daresay that if one looked out of place around there, a local Bobby would be called. They live in a Dickensian middle class enclave. Expensive residences force segregation, they will not admit that though.
Yet they helped thrust on the white Rhodesians a certain kind of regime. It became possibly worse than that which British people faced living in islands off France. These were occupied by German troops early in 1940. We know how the Germans behaved when those British islands of Jersey and Guernsey were occupied in WW2.
The BBC had to shut their mouths about it, for -well life went on there. Bad for the morale. A long ramble, but the protesters in another country ,find it easy to dictate what will not occur in their own country.
Here's a better way to visualize it. As you watch, keep in mind that's merely the debt, and does not even take into account what was spent within budget...
Not in Zimbucks, that's two notes with Z$85,000,000,000,000 in change coming...
Still, if they are financially in the black, they are ahead of us in that respect.
There are T-Shirts out there and there’s a great logo that I’ve seen here on FR, a which I have a copy of, but be damned if I can figure out how to post it.
As an alum of the U of North Dakota I picked the name after the NCAA forced the school to drop its use of “University of North Dakota Fightin’ Sioux” as its sports team nickname (NOT mascot...they have NEVER had a mascot)...I grew up on a reservation (not a Lakota or Sioux reservation) and always thought it was cool that (mostly) lily white N.D. had honored the mighty Lakota nations by using its (admittedly white) name honorarily, and with much pride and respect...
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