Zimbabwe money requires higher math
LA Times:
I think Zimbabwe needs to experiment with currency squared or cubed. It might be an easier way to keep up with inflation that moves as fast as theirs. Of course if they got really serious they would be rid of Mugabe and use some foreign currency.
Reporting from Harare, Zimbabwe -- It's confusing.There is more.
The pale blue bank note that says 1,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars really means 10,000,000,000,000,000,000. Yes, that's 10 quintillion, taking into account the 13 zeros Zimbabwe's central bank has lopped off in the last couple of years to make the country's currency somewhat more manageable.Every time they get out of hand, Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank scythes away 00000s. The largest note, Z$100,000,000,000, released in July and useless within weeks, looked so bizarre with all the zeros squeezed in that it became an instant collector's item.Zimbabweans chuckle when they see a foreigner bumbling with their currency. They launch into long, looping explanations that leave you lassoed by the zeros, and more confused than when you started. It's difficult to resist just holding up the Z$1,000,000 note and asking a reliable local, "What's this worth?"
Regardless, inflation is soaring so fast in Zimbabwe that it's hard to figure out what a Z$1-million note is actually worth on a given day.
Somewhere between July's Z$100-billion note and the more recent zero-reduced Z$1-million note, it's easy to get mixed up. Even more confusing are the wildly different exchange rates that depend on how you pay for purchases.
But they can get confused themselves. To my surprise, when I tried it last month, my math-savvy friend no longer had the calculation in his head. So he pulled up his cellphone calculator and tapped away.
"Ech! My cellphone can't cope with all these zeros," he grumbled, while I stared at the bustling crowd on Robert Mugabe Street, wondering where they could be going, in an economy where nothing works.
Finally he had an answer: "That's worth about 50 cents, a bit less than 50 cents."
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I think Zimbabwe needs to experiment with currency squared or cubed. It might be an easier way to keep up with inflation that moves as fast as theirs. Of course if they got really serious they would be rid of Mugabe and use some foreign currency.
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