Things I've Missed Out On: Zimbabwean Cash Baths

The other day, as I was posting that amazing joke about the Icelandic economy, I was reminded of a photograph I saw earlier this summer of a Zimbabwean kid strutting down the street with as many stacks of cash his little arms could carry. I remember thinking, this kid is a fucking pimp. Then I read up on it and discovered these $200,000 bills he's carrying were worth about 3 cents apiece. Okay, I think to myself, so maybe he's not a pimp, he's probably been charged with the task of walking to the corner store to buy a bottle of milk.

Hyperinflation is fascinating to me. This spring, one Canadian dollar would have bought you over ZWD$45 million. I ask YOU, who could resist the temptation to bathe in this much money? By July, the Canadian dollar was worth almost ZWD$1 trillion. They were printing money so fast that they fucking ran out of paper. Give me a fucking break; at this rate it would actually be cheaper to bathe in the money than to try and spend it on anything. It would be possible to save on food costs by blending the shit in water and drinking the worthless, filthy slurry. Economically speaking, it would literally be a waste of time to hold, look at, or burn stacks of this currency to warm your home. I think you get the idea.

Okay, so everything other than the money bath is rather unappealing. In fact, it's understandably ruining the lives of almost all Zimbabweans. Still though, filling a bathtub with liquid capital and writhing ecstatically within it has always been a dream of mine, especially bills with so many zeroes (on July 19th, they released a ZWD$100 billion bill, the highest denomination of currency ever produced anywhere, which could buy about three eggs).

For a second there, I thought this bathing idea may have been possible, at least until July 30 when widely detested tyrant dictator Robert "Fuckhead" Mugabe and his corrupt, impotent government ruined my dream by knocking ten zeroes off the currency, turning ZWD$10 billion into ZWD$1. I guess he assumed he could save on money printing costs or something.

Robert Mugabe is a fucking clown, but not the funny kind. The kind who has his opposition leader arrested and beaten to a pulp. The kind who has dissident citizens raped and beaten. The kind who consistently rigs elections, works around the clock to destroy freedom of press, and earlier this year had his thugs sever the hands and feet of a political opponent's pregnant wife before burning her and her six-year-old son alive.

He's a huge prick, is what I'm trying to say. In the early 1920s the Weimar Germans decided "Hey, we'll just print more money," and it failed. Mugabe said "Oh, our currency is worth less than nothing? Um, er, DUHHH... No it's not...?" and expected everyone to believe him. Well guess what, Mugabe? It ain't fucking working, man. The ZWD coins you reintroduced were worthless again within days. On September 19th you had to introduce a ZWD$1000 bill and then ZWD$10,000 and ZWD$20,000 ten days later (maybe it's just a matter of time before I can fulfill my bathing fantasy). The minimum price for a loaf of bread is ZWD$7000, or $70 trillion in the old system. Half a kilogram of baby cereal costs ZWD$1060. The average teacher's monthly salary is ZWD$800. Your country's inflation is now estimated to be 5,700,000,000,000% (not a typo - trillions), and you couldn't give a shit. Asshole.

So how are you?