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In Zimbabwe, virtually everyone is a trillionaire who walk around with wheelbarrowful of money! Wait, perhaps that’s not such a good thing after all … except for numismatists and eBayers.
A 100-trillion-dollar bill, it turns out, is worth about $5.
That’s the going rate for Zimbabwe’s highest denomination note, the biggest ever produced for legal tender—and a national symbol of monetary policy run amok. At one point in 2009, a hundred-trillion-dollar bill couldn’t buy a bus ticket in the capital of Harare.
But since then the value of the Zimbabwe dollar has soared. Not in Zimbabwe, where the currency has been abandoned, but on eBay.
The notes are a hot commodity among currency collectors and novelty buyers, fetching 15 times what they were officially worth in circulation. [...]
Frank Templeton, a retired Wall Street equities trader, bought "quintillions of Zimbabwe dollars" through a broker from Zimbabwe’s central bank. On eBay, he now does a brisk trade in the bills from his home in the Hamptons, on New York’s Long Island. "I like to say Warren Buffett made a lot of people millionaires, but I’ve made more people trillionaires," Mr. Templeton says. The dealer paid between $1 and $2 for each of the bills in several purchases over about a year, and now sells them for around $5-$6 apiece.
Patrick McGroarty and Farai Mutsaka wrote The Wall Street Journal article: Link
In some places, US bank notes are considered filthy lucre. So filthy, in fact, that they have to be washed. This isn’t what you normally think of when you think of money laundering. This is actual washing-machine laundry in Zimbabwe! Since Zimbabwe dollars are near-worthless, American dollars are preferred, and they change hands a lot.
Low-denomination U.S bank notes change hands until they fall apart here in Africa, and the bills are routinely carried in underwear and shoes through crime-ridden slums.
Some have become almost too smelly to handle, so Zimbabweans have taken to putting their $1 bills through the spin cycle and hanging them up to dry with clothes pins alongside sheets and items of clothing.
It’s the best solution—apart from rubber gloves or disinfectant wipes—in a continent where the U.S. dollar has long been the currency of choice and where the lifespan of a dollar far exceeds what the U.S. Federal Reserve intends.
The recommended method is hand washing, but washing machines are also used. Those who know say chemical dry cleaning will cause the ink to fade. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: AP/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)
To protest the hyperinflation that has rendered the Zimbabwe currency worthless and to raise awareness of the dire economic situation there, the Zimbabwean Newspaper created an ad campaign featuring huge posters, wall murals, flyers, and even billboards all made out of trillions of Zimbabwean dollars. Check out the photos from the newspaper’s Flickr photostream.
The Mugabe regime has destroyed Zimbabwe. It has presided over the brutal oppression of the opposition, a cholera crises, massive food shortages and the total collapse of their economy. Furthermore anyone brave enough to report this has been bullied, beaten and driven into exile. One such group is ‘the Zimbabwean Newspaper’. However, not content with having hounded these journalists out, the regime has slapped an import ‘luxury’ duty of over 55% on them which makes the paper unaffordable for the average Zimbabwean. In order to subsidize the paper they need to sell it in England and South Africa, to raise the foreign currency.
A unique campaign was devised to promote the paper to raise awareness and increase readership. One of the most eloquent symbols of Zimbabwe’s collapse is the Z$100 trillion dollar note, a symptom of their world record inflation. This note cannot buy anything, not even a loaf of bread and certainly not any advertising, but it can become the advertising, it can be a powerful reminder about Zimbabwe’s plight and the need to hold someone accountable.
Link – via thehouseofmarketing
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