Brother, Can You Spare a Billion?
by Jeff Davis
If you ever have a yen to check out the glories of black rule, Zimbabwe is the place and the website here is a good resource. According to a Reuters article “Zimbabwe’s central bank will introduce new higher-value 100 billion Zimbabwe dollar notes on Monday as part of a desperate fight against spiralling hyperinflation… Zimbabweans are suffering chronic shortages of meat, maize, fuel and other basic commodities due to the collapse of the once prosperous economy, which critics blame on President Robert Mugabe’s policies, including his violent seizure of white-owned farms.”
What kind of nation destroys its own food supply? Probably somewhat more primitive cousins of a nation like ours, that destroys its own energy supply by threatening to bomb and invade our primary suppliers.
Reuters goes on: “Central bank Governor Gideon Gono announced on Wednesday that inflation had surpassed 2.2 million percent, though some economists put it much higher. In a notice in the official Herald newspaper on Saturday, Gono said the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe would introduce 100 billion dollar special agro-cheques (notes), to help consumers who currently need to carry large wads of cash even for simple transactions. This new $100 billion (2,214 pound) special agro-cheque will go into circulation on Monday, the notice said. The central bank has been printing higher denomination banknotes to keep pace with soaring prices. The most valuable bank note currently in circulation is worth Z$50 billion.”
Reuters again: “Gono said he was also considering raising the amount of cash people could withdraw daily from their bank accounts. The central bank has imposed a withdrawal limit of Z$100 billion, but this is only enough for two trips on an urban commuter bus or two loaves of bread — if one can find it. The Zimbabwe dollar, which had been officially pegged at 30,000 to the U.S. dollar before exchange rules were relaxed recently, now trades at about 800 million to the greenback. Besides struggling with shortages of basic goods and services, Zimbabweans also spend long hours in bank queues trying to withdraw their money.”
Much like IndyMac depositors in California last week and probably Wachovia customers in the near future.
The Retuers article concludes “Two weeks ago a German firm, Giesecke and Devrient, stopped deliveries of banknote paper to Zimbabwe following pressure from the German government amid international criticism of Mugabe’s widely condemned re-election. Gono said Zimbabwe had made alternative arrangements.”
In other words, they’re getting their currency paper from their Chinese friends now.
When, oh when will ignorant savages like Mugabe learn that simply printing money as you need it leads to galloping inflation and economic destruction? And come to that, when will the Federal Reserve learn the same lesson?
You see, the Federal Reserve and the financial rulers of Wall Street are now doing exactly the same thing, on a more sophisticated scale, than Mugabe’s Commie kaffirs in Zimbuggery are doing. It’s just a bit less visible, concealed by a little more smoke and mirrors, and since we have more wealth to waste, it’s taking a little longer.
In Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, the inflation is making unaffordable basic commodities everyone can see and feel and touch and eat, like bread and oil and gasoline and electricity and auto parts. When outfits like Bear Stearns and IndyMac go down, what happens is that the Fed “prints” (i.e. creates on a computer; they’re probably not even bothering to actually print the bills any more) X billion or trillion dollars and then “loans” it to J. P. Morgan Chase or to the FDIC, as the case may be, in order to shore up the creaking and decrepit financial structure another few weeks until the next crisis. But the effect is the same: more worthless paper (or computer terminal) money is pumped into the system, causing the price of everything to leap so vendors can get the same amount of value and profit per item sold or traded as before.
The ultimate result is “loss of confidence.” All of a sudden something snaps, people realize that the small green pieces of paper are worthless, and pretty soon it’s Mad Max and Road Warrior time.
That may be a bit oversimplified, but essentially, that’s the deal. This is Economics 101 and it’s impossible for these sharp Jews not to be aware of the fact. The people ruling us are all so mega-rich and have their own personal wealth stashed in so many shelters and secure hiding places that they simply don’t care what kind of damage they do to the economy or to the country or other people’s lives. They seem determined to ruin the US currency and there’s little we can do right now to stop them.