The Currency of Zimbabwe By Shane Tully

Just recently, Zimbabwe has gone into hyperinflation. The hyperinflation is sure not a good word their economy and was caused by excessive printing of money by their current president Robert Mugabe. He,being the leader since the country became independent from Great Britain in 1980, is now 85 years old and has recently joined the opposition government, controlled by Morgan Tsvangirai, that it will no longer use the Zimbabwe's currency for a whole year. This was mostly out of fear that there country's currency could soon turn into worthless paper.
The country of Zimbabwe is currently in hyperinflation mode because of the 230 million, that's right, million percent increase in inflation. The obvious consequences to this economic environment certainly has put a detrimental effect on their prices of goods and services. This continued for months and has recently fallen again to even lower consumer prices.
Some suspicion has arose about the ways Mugabe is running the country though. Recently critics have said that he "has destroyed one of Africa's most promising economies through controversial policies, including the seizure of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to inexperienced black farmers" (Zimbabwe shelves), but Mugabe denies the charges and says that it's the enemies of his that oppose his nationalistic policies.
This most certainly relates to what we are doing in the class room right now. For one thing we just reviewed foreign currency exchanges and how they depreciate and appreciate. In this case, of course we have a vast supply of Zimbabwe's currency out in the country. The problem is though that since there is way too much, the demand for it has skyrocketed downward. Basically if we were going to compare it to the U.S., we would be able to buy a lot more for our money, and I mean a lot more. This would also mean that we would import more, which is what were not doing right now since they don't make various different goods that we need and because of the unemployment rate there is higher than 90%, which obviously means there not getting much done to distribute any products.


http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE53B0SF20090412