Zimbabwe Runs out of Cash
by Ian Mosley
The only thing worse for the economy of an African nation than printing money like mad, is not printing money like mad.
According to a Los Angeles Times article “It has come to this: Zimbabwe is about to run out of the paper to print money on. Fidelity Printers & Refiners, the state-owned company that tirelessly churns out bank notes for the Robert Mugabe regime, was thrown into a crisis early this month after a German company stopped supplying bank note paper because of concerns over Zimbabwe’s recent violent presidential election, widely seen as fraudulent by international observers… The printing operation drastically slowed. Two-thirds of the 1,000-strong workforce was ordered to go on leave, and two of the three money-printing shifts were canceled. The result on the streets was an immediate cash crunch. ‘If you think this currency shortage is bad, wait two weeks. By then it will be a disaster,’ said a senior Fidelity staffer, who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity because he would face dismissal and possible violence for talking to a Western journalist. The paper will run out in two weeks, he said.”
The current state of Zimbabwe is similar to that of Weimar Germany –if it never pulled out of the Great Depression. Weimar Germany’s economy collapsed thanks to horrible mismanagement by a corrupt two party system, and the crushing burden of having to pay an incredible sum in reparations for the First World War thanks to the grossly unjust Versailles Treaty. In contrast Zimbabwe started out with a healthy economy, thanks to the preceding white government, and it could have continued to feed itself and surrounding African nations if only the Marxist dictator, Robert Mugabe did not blame all his problems on the white farmers, who became targets of violent assault by Mugabe’s thugs. (more…)