A Hamburger? That’ll be 15 Million Zimbabwe Dollars, Please!

If you think your money doesn’t go as far as it used to, be thankful that you’re not in Zimbabwe. There, the country’s central bank has issued a new 10 million Zimbabwe dollar note. The problem is, that’s not enough to buy even a hamburger!

The new 10 million note is the equivalent of about £2 at the dominant black market exchange rate. A hamburger at an ordinary cafe costs about 15 million Zimbabwe dollars (£3).

That hamburger has trebled in price this month amid shortages of bread, meat and most basic goods.

Zimbabwe faces the world’s highest official inflation of an estimated 25,000 per cent. Independent financial institutions say real inflation is closer to 150,000 per cent.

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January 20, 2008 at 2:59 am by Alex
Category: Money & Finance, Pictures

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9 comments to "A Hamburger? That’ll be 15 Million Zimbabwe Dollars, Please!"

biltmore
January 20th, 2008 at 3:01 am
Wow. That’s insane.
brian t
January 20th, 2008 at 3:40 am
First time I’ve seen money with a sell-by date on it…
Alex
January 20th, 2008 at 5:19 am
Good catch brian t! I didn’t see that at first.

You know, all Zimbabweans are pretty much millionaires…
Lemons
January 20th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Reminds me of the old Turkish lira, actually. Back in 2001 they made the shift to the new lira (YTL), which dropped the six zeroes that had resulted from major inflation– i.e. 1,000,000 TL became 1 YTL.
MrPumpernickel
January 20th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
*shrug* I have an old bill from Germany, 500,000,000 Deutschmark (500 million). Ten million is peanuts.
VonSkippy
January 20th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Hey, give them a break. Running a completely corrupt government takes a lot of zeros these days (just look at America’s finances if you disagree).
marieissah
January 20th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
hahaha :)) Nice! You’ll be buying burgers for millions in cash. Cool!
Ryan
January 21st, 2008 at 12:57 pm
This reminds me of this story about Yugoslavia.

http://www.rogershermansociety.org/yugoslavia.htm
Sid Morrison
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:13 am
Hey, Zimbabwe is just learning that food gets to be in short supply (= expensive) when you take all the land away from the efficient large farmers and disperse it to a myriad of inexperienced people running tiny farms. The food gets expensive first and everything else follows. Mugabe needs an economics advisor who took a class in teh subject.

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