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Zimbabwe unveils 100 trillion dollar banknote
- Mystalic 18y agoFor only $300 U.S., I could be a quintillionaire! Hell yes!
- 3pt14159 18y agoThat $300 US is really only $1 US circa 1930 - 1 to 1E15 returns, astounding!
- gravitycop 18y agoThat $300 US is really only $1 US circa 1930 What data set are you using? I got $12.39 (for $1 inflating from 1930-2009; $24.20 for $300 deflating backward in time) using the standard data set at Tom's Inflation Calculator: http://www.halfhill.com/inflation.html http://www.halfhill.com/inflation.html
- 3pt14159 18y agoGrowth in the M1 index. http://www.shadowstats.com/ http://www.shadowstats.com/
- gravitycop 18y agoThanks. I suppose you have read this: http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2008/09/shadowstats_deb.html http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2008/09/shadowstats_deb....
- patio11 18y agoWait another few days and you could be a quintillionaire for less than the price of a cup of coffee.
- jws 18y agoRemember that Zimbabwe redemoninated in mid 2008 and took 10 zeroes off the bills, and it hardly seems worth mentioning but they took 3 zeroes off in 2006. That makes this new bill 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 which may or may not be 1 nonillion dollars. It's a lot of zeroes, I may have missed a few one way or another.
- froo 18y agoAt this rate, I think the idea of a Googolplex note being in circulation isn't too far out of the realm of possibility.
- jerf 18y agoGoogolplex, no, but based on jws' post, they are well on their way to a googol. Googol = 10 ^ 100, Googolplex = 10 ^ googol. They're over a quarter of the way there! (And I am finding very hard not to type Google.)
- biohacker42 18y agoMake it your home page and you won't have to keep typing it into the URL bar.
- mhartl 18y agoThey're over a quarter of the way there! Only on a log scale. Which is what they're going to have to switch to pretty soon.
- jerf 18y agoTechnically, inflation is indeed an exponential process. But there's no real need for me to take refuge in the word "technically" when we're talking about 231 million percent inflation. There's nothing technically exponential about that. (Sadly.)
- henning 18y agoGee, it's a good thing I don't know crap about monetary policy, or else I might think measures like this are just putting a bandaid on a bad situation rather than addressing the fact that Zimbabwe is under the control of an incompetent authoritarian dictator.
- gravitycop 18y agoThere was a good post recently on Mugabe in the other half of this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=433767 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=433767 Mugabe wasn't horrible, and that's what's sad about all of this -- the land reform was a populist grab that was initiated when he started losing his grasp on the country. He's shown over and again that he's willing to put his position above the interests of the country in the last few years, and that's what'll make him go down in history as a despot rather than a hero.
- tapinko 18y agoAt what point do you just admit defeat?
- vaksel 18y agoso how long until we see an infinity bank note?
- thomasmallen 18y agoYou mean a burner?
- eru 18y agoWhat does that mean?
- rglovejoy 18y agoThe article notes the security features being used in the new banknotes. Why would they bother? In a month, they'll be worth less than the paper they are made of.
- markessien 18y agoGermany solved their hyperinflation problem in the 20s by backing up the currency with land. I wonder if Zimbabwe will have to do the same. That would be ironic.
- snorkel 18y agoHonest dumb question: If I had a Z$100 trillion note today and held it for 10 years after which time Zimbabwe made a modest comeback (hopefully) what would determine the value of that note then? Perhaps it'd be worth $10000? Or does the new government of the recovering nation just scrap all of the old currency and tell any note holders to cash in the old notes by such a date or they'll be worth nothing? What happens to hyper-inflated currencies in recovery mode?
- gravitycop 18y agowhat would determine the value of that note then? The amount of specie in circulation, divided by the assets that back that specie. Perhaps it'd be worth $10000? That would represent massive deflation. Normally, governments print enough specie to at least keep up with the asset growth that backs it. If not, they might require massive taxation (recovery of existing specie) to cover their costs.
- eru 18y agoThey get replaced by new currency. See Rentenmark on Wikipedia.
- furyg3 18y agoI'd kind of like to grab one of these on ebay, actually.
- ca98am79 18y agoman, now my site is really worthless: http://www.millionzimbabwedollarhomepage.com http://www.millionzimbabwedollarhomepage.com instead of all this nonsense, they should just release a $1 Zillion dollar note and then they won't have to change it all the time.