NWSFLSH: Local Man's Hopes Dashed by Shit African Economy

by Jeffy Jefferson, Staff Reporter

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- The dream is over. It's all gone Pete Tong. Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that The Central Bank of Zimbabwe has essentially abandoned its currency with the announcement that businesses can now legally conduct business in foreign currencies. This means a couple of things: among them, 1) that the starving trillionaires of Zimbabwe will continue to use US dollars for basic transactions, as they have been for months; 2) that Zimbabwean teachers, many of whom have resorted to selling their bodies on the street to earn money, might have some reason to go back to work in the coming months with the incentive of being paid in non-imaginary currency; and 3) that it no longer makes logical sense to continue printing new, obscenely high denominations of money nobody is using anyways.

So on to the really bad news, the related but much more distressing story for me: today we have news that a week or two after introducing its highest denomination bill ($100 trillion) they've knocked TWELVE more zeros off the Zim Dollar. If you've read this blog before, you know how devastating this is for me and my dream of rolling and writhing around in a bathtub teeming with cash money dollar bills, be they worthless or not. There's nothing I can do, and as a result it's probably time I start looking to other countries with floundering economies. Mother shit.


A short calculation: Under the new system, one trillion ZWD now equals one ZWD. In the last five months, this country has knocked TWENTY TWO zeros off its currency. At $100 trillion, the newest bill was worth about $35USD. If the system were left unchecked... Okay that's a poor choice of words, because the system HAS been left entirely unchecked. But if the system had not made its ludicrous attempts to control inflation by cutting 22 zeros out of the equation, $0.33 USD would today be worth ten SEXTILLION ZWD, or $10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (there are something like 70 sextillion stars in our motherfucking GALAXY according to the most recent estimates). All that works out to about three and a half metric shit-tons of zeros. This kind of hyperinflation makes me finally understand why we had to learn scientific notation in high school, as when you get to numbers like these it's not even worth your time to write that many zeros. You know your country is in trouble when.

Anyways, in moderately positive news for the nation, it also looks like president Bobby "Dick" Mugabe may have finally come to a power-sharing deal with Morgan Tsvangirai, the HUGE-balled opposition leader who has in the past been kidnapped, threatened, and beaten to a pulp by Mugabe's troops. So maybe something good will come of that, but I wouldn't bet the farm just yet, as Mugabe has a promise-keeping history on par with Hitler himself ("Guys I told you already, I'm not gonna invade Czechoslovakia. Seriously. You have my word."). Because it's topical, and because Mugabe's a dick, I want to share this awesome drawing my brother Justin did of Mugabe recently:

'mr. mugabe, how do you get your powers?' (2009)

Awesome.

Mugabe to World Leaders: "Bitch I thought I told you to shut your dirty bitch mouth, bitch"

So it sucks that there's still stuff to post about this dude, but our buddy and President of the Failed State of Zimbabwe Robert "Fuckhead" Mugabe is back at it again. There is so much shit going down in his country right now that it's impossible to talk about it all, but it's also impossible not to say anything about it. So here's a brief summary of the tip of the iceberg.

Firstly:  Mugabe's government has now gone on record insulting heads of state all over the world who have criticized its tyrannical dictatorship, stating it hopes "this is the last time they open their dirty mouths on Zimbabwe." As of today, Mugabe is inexplicably (and inexcusably) backed by the African Union in his refusal to leave office and is using this opportunity to all but dare the rest of the world to overthrow him, saying through his spokesman, "we won this country through the barrel of the gun and we will defend it the way we won it." No doubt that's hardcore, but it's the stupid kind of hardcore, more like post-screamo-core than anything. So this isn't the first time Mugabe and his crew have challenged world leaders. He's been noted in the past for, on separate occasions, telling former UK PM Tony Blair and American Ambassador to Zimbabwe Chris Dell to both "go to hell." He also once called Blair a "gangster" who had "gone insane." I love that. I'm sorry but to me it's really funny when politicians are that candid on record.

Secondly: Apart from widespread starvation, which is more or less commonplace and therefore no longer surprising in this country, Zimbabweans have a couple of terrifying disease outbreaks to keep their minds off their mess of a country. FAQ TIME!

Q: Which diseases? A: Cholera, the last outbreak of which in North America occurred in 1911 (and has now infected over 11,000 Zimbabweans), and ANTHRAX. Like, not your fancy "biotech-lab-cultured-post-9/11-white-powder-to-Sen.-Tom-Daschle" kind of anthrax, but rather the "your-livestock-is-dead-because-you-can't-feed-it-and-death-surrounds-you-because-there's-no-firewood-to-boil-water-with-and-you-are-literally-forced-to-eat-raw-the-spore-ridden-rotting-corpses-of-your-cattle" kind of anthrax.

Q: Who the fuck gets anthrax nowadays? A: I don't know. It's insane. But the real answer is 3 people, so far.

Thirdly: These internal and foreign policy calamities all come just days after George "Fuckhead" Bush finally spoke out against Mugabe, saying something like "DUR, he's bad...time to go," which, coming from the spittled mouth of the most powerful subhumans on the planet, is supposed to mean something. So who the hell knows. Barack Obama has yet to make a comment, so this would be a good opportunity for him to step up and at least say something.

At the same time, although it sounds selfish, the paper money bathing fantasy I keep writing about (see 'Zimbabwe' tag below) seems to become more and more realistic every day, even after Mugabe knocked ten zeroes off the currency a couple months back. In reaction to months and months of exploding hyperinflation (and really, who could have guessed that knocking ten zeroes off the currency would NOT effectively solve the nation's financial crisis?), the government has now unveiled its latest obscenely large bill, at the denomination of $200,000,000. This is the second time around that they've released a bill at this amount, so maybe this'll be it. Maybe this is as high as they'll have to go, and they won't release a $1 billion bill in the next month or so. Maybe. Probably not though. I don't think it's unreasonable to say it won't be long until they're back to the $100 billion bill and I'm washing my stanky crotch in cash money that is worth less that the dirt it's covered in. 

Lastly: Under Mugabe's orders, as if all this bullshit weren't enough of a strain on the Zimbabwean people, his troops have now begun to spark and fuel a huge blood-diamond industry by looting diamond mines, killing indiscriminately, and generally fucking shit up all over the place.

BOOOOO. Next post will be positive and happy, I promise.

A fine day.

On this day we are one step closer...

...to sane government in the States, which affects us all. What it do, Obama.

AND

...to my fantasy of bathing in paper currency. Today, just over two months after Robert Mugabe idiotically cut ten zeroes off his nation's currency, making ten dollars the highest denomination available, Zimbabwe is again issuing ZWD $100,000, $200,000 and $1,000,000 notes. Before today the highest denomination was ZWD $50,000, which won't buy even a half of a loaf of bread. Today, as the new currency is being issued, a million Zimbabwean dollars is worth 8 US dollars and is steadily falling.

1000 Czech koruny equals roughly $60 Canadian. When I arrived in the Czech Republic and I realized a person within my means could possibly spend a thousand of something in one night, I was absolutely thrilled. But shit man, what about the prospect of spending ten million of something at the bar?
I'm telling you, Mildred. These fellows may be on to something.

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?