[mattduke]

The only interesting thing about this to me is that people there still attempt to use the paper tickets as money at all. I mean, I stopped owning dollars already, and they can still buy me a bag of movie popcorn for 6 of them.
link

Converted Url to hyperlink per COC 3.1.2 "Graphic content: In addition, do not include long URLs that cause the page view to widen and requires the reader to scroll." -FL

[vox_mundi]

Zimbabwe- the poster child of collapse
From Water shortages force Zimbabwe parliament closure

[TheDude]

FSN had a segment about Dinner in Zimbabwe. Big photo gallery of bank notes.





What, no tip?

[skeptik]

What, no tip?

That doesnt appear on the bill. It's at your discretion. You leave something in the wheelbarrow in the middle of the table.
(although US $5 subtly palmed off to the Maitre D' on the way out is much more appreciated)

[Tyler_JC]

I don't understand why anyone is still using that currency either.

Every other country in that situation would have already dollarized/euroized by now.

[Commanding_Heights]

What is the highest denomination note they have now and how do I get one. When Zimbabgoneaway makes a come back I'm gonna pay my house off.

[nobodypanic]

Zimbabwe- the poster child of collapse
From Water shortages force Zimbabwe parliament closure

their legal system is collapsing from a lack of water, eh.

i for one would dance a jig if my legal system collapsed, so long judges and lawyers.

[3aidlillahi]

People giving up on the long lost art of reading?

"A lot of barter takes place. Money is not used as much or if it is, it's all foreign exchange." Supermarkets in Harare are accepting only US dollars and South African rands, leaving those Zimbabweans without access to foreign currency in dire straits.

I'm still amazed that there was a situation even worse than this. Monetarily at least. I don't think Hungary even came close to their long-term geopolitical and environmental problems.

[sicophiliac]

Can anyone enlighten me to why inflation has spiraled out of control in Zimbabwe? Was it due to massive government borrowing combined with what little economy they had imploding? Did a drought or something agricultural occur initially to break them economically?

[thylacine]

Zimbabwe timeline

[eXpat]

Now, read carefully the title of this article:

Lack of funds forces closure of Zimbabwe parliament, says MDC
• Parliament has run out of money and water
• High court, schools and hospitals have also shut

Yes, that´s right, they stopped the printing, ceased to struggle and left any pretention of "business as usual" with a mega inflated currency.

Zimbabwe's parliament has been forced to close because it has run out of cash and water, the opposition claimed today, as the country's economic crisis causes a virtual shutdown of public life.

Hotels in Harare have been refusing to accept MPs because the parliament has no money to pay their expenses or allowances.

It has also gone days without water. Speaking to the independent news agency Zim Online, Innocent Gonese, chief whip of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said: "Parliament has no money to pay for the MPs' allowances and accommodation. That is why parliament had to adjourn to December 16. There was also no water at the building."

On Tuesday the high court was forced to close because of water shortages. Many schools and hospitals are also shut.

link
Soon to be released in your neighborhood

[RedStateGreen]

It's just a sad slide of a formerly decent country with an incompetent psycho at the helm.

At least someone is at the helm. It's countries where sociopathic teenage warlords roam around in pickups unchecked, terrorizing starving villagers with Uzis, that more resembles Mad Max. I hope the oil runs out before America comes to that.

[pedalling_faster]

i have a feeling that 1000, maybe 2000 years ago, Africa was a much more peaceful & productive place.

just people living off the land, in small numbers. melting silver in campfires (according to one of my silversmithing instructors), etc.

it still hurts to think about their dentistry techniques though. some practiced version of what Tom Hanks does with the ice skate when he knocks out the tooth in CastAway ?

[Jotapay]

Africans were more in balance with the land 1000 years ago as well. They hadn't experienced a population explosion due to western medicine and food production techniques.

It's funny to think that just 10 years ago this country was so successful at farming that it fed the rest of Africa.

[Zardoz]

It's hard to imagine Mugabe lasting much longer. The people are progressively losing their fear of him and his thugs. Things are turning around now, and fairly rapidly. We may be seeing a bloodbath developing, and it'll be Mugabe's men who will be doing the bleeding:

In Zimbabwe, the hunters are now the hunted

As Robert Mugabe's grip on power has slipped, the thugs who carried out preelection terror in his name find themselves in the cross hairs of those they tormented.

The "green bomber" dropped into Club M5 the other day to get a bottle of Lion beer to go, but he wasn't fast enough. Right away he was surrounded by five members of the opposition, people he used to beat up, in a township bar where he used to be king.

"They just surrounded me. They started accusing me of this and that. They just wanted revenge. They said: 'Now we got you alone. You used to trouble us during your heyday. Now it's our day.' "

He ran, chased by the drunken group.

The green bombers were the ruling party's shock troops, thugs who killed and terrorized in the name of President Robert Mugabe before elections this year. Just a few months ago, the thought of challenging one of them was unthinkable in Harare's townships, stagnant and hopeless places where young men hung around sharing cheap beer in plastic bottles and waiting for the "Old Man" to die.

But after Mugabe was forced into a power-sharing deal with the opposition in September, there was a quickening: People were impatient, exuberant, hopeful and fearful of betrayal all at once. Now that the deal has collapsed, the frustration in the capital's townships is palpable, and the specter of spiraling violence looms over their shabby streets.

People want justice -- and without it, some warn darkly, they'll take matters into their own hands.

[gnm]

It's just a sad slide of a formerly decent country with an incompetent psycho at the helm.

That could apply to the USA as well....

-G

[PenultimateManStanding]

Yemen is next it looks like. Maybe there will be pirates all over the place before long. Bye bye shipping.

[Jotapay]

Yemen is next it looks like. Maybe there will be pirates all over the place before long. Bye bye shipping.

I don't think the pirates will have a serious effect on much. Three ships really isn't going to make much of a dent.

It isn't that expensive to put some serious hardware and a few trained personnel on these ships to repel the poorly equipped and trained pirates.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Yemen is next it looks like. Maybe there will be pirates all over the place before long. Bye bye shipping.

I don't think the pirates will have a serious effect on much. Three ships really isn't going to make much of a dent. It isn't that expensive to put some serious hardware and a few trained personnel on these ships to repel the poorly equipped and trained pirates.

poorly equipped? they are taking ships 400 miles off the coast. Militarizing the shipping vessels themselves is not a bad idea but they aren't doing it. Maybe there is something about Somali culture that is lacking in Zimbabwe. Then again, maybe even now they are saying hey! we should do that too.

[yeahbut]

Yemen is next it looks like. Maybe there will be pirates all over the place before long. Bye bye shipping.

I don't think the pirates will have a serious effect on much. Three ships really isn't going to make much of a dent.

link One of the world's biggest shippers, Denmark's A.P. Moller-Maersk, said Thursday it was sending some of its 50 oil tankers around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa rather than navigate the now notorious Gulf of Aden off the Somali coast.

Other shipping companies, including Norway's Frontline Ltd., which transports much of the Middle East's oil to areas around the world, were considering similar moves, said international tanker association Intertanko.

If shipping companies were to direct their vessels around South Africa instead of through the Gulf of Aden en route to the Suez Canal and beyond, there would be a "series of negative repercussions," said the head of the International Maritime Organization, Efthimios Mitropoulos.

Each journey would require an extra 750 metric tons of fuel and emit an extra 2,335 tons of carbon dioxide, Mitropoulos said during a UN Security Council debate on Somalia.

A journey from the Saudi oil port of Ras Tanura to the European port of Gibraltar would double in length and take almost 12 days longer if ships took the route around the Cape of Good Hope, he said. The current route takes tankers into the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean.

Freight rates could initially more than double and eventually settle at about 25 to 30 per cent higher, he added.