If you think inflation’s bad here…
…then check out Zimbabwe, which has the highest rate of hyper-inflation in the world. It’s even gotten to the point that the government will soon run out of the paper it uses to print its currency on.
One U.S. dollar is now the equivalent of 50 billion Zimbabwean dollars. And — not surprisingly — it’s all due to the disastrous rule of President Robert Mugabe’s regime.
Fidelity Printers [which prints Zimbabwean currency] is Mugabe’s lifeline. It prints the money to pay the police, soldiers and intelligence organs that keep the regime in power. Lately, the money has been used to set up a network of command bases around the country staffed by liberation war veterans and youth militias, hired muscle to terrify the population into voting for Mugabe in the June 27 presidential runoff election.
If the regime can’t pay the security forces on which it relies, it would face economic paralysis — and potential collapse.
Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown harks back to the collapse of its major export industry, commercial farming, after Mugabe’s controversial land reform program early in the decade. That left the nation starved of foreign exchange, but government spending went on.
How did it do that? It printed money. But printing more and more money without an increase in productivity fueled rampant hyperinflation.
As hyperinflation spiraled last year, Fidelity printed million-dollar notes, then 5-million, 10-million, 25-million, 50-million. This year, it has been forced to print 100-million, 250-million and 500-million notes in rapid succession, all now practically worthless. The highest denomination is now 50 billion Zimbabwean dollars (worth a U.S. dollar on the street).
How would you like to pay 100,000,000,000 dollars for a beer? That was the price at a bar in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, on July 4 at 5 pm. Yikes.
And this is what you get with a Marxist leader who takes from the rich and giveth to the undeserved in order to eliminate “classes.” Mugabe took the farm land away from the whites and gave it to undeserving others. They have no idea how to farm the land and now the country is starving. This is what America has to look forward too? Terrific!
I don’t think anyone ever imagined or dreamed of Africa setting any standards for America’s government or economy. But, do not be so cocky as to think that this same kind of devastation is not possible to the US economy. In fact, it is very possible if certain countries wished such devastation upon us. Such as Saudi and Communist China who owns more of America than Americans do.
And we find ourselves in such a vulnerable position because of Republican leadership and control.
It began with the god of the Republicans, Pres. Reagan placing America on the auction block where his administration worked out a deal in the early eighties with the Saudis to offset US government budget deficits, a tune of one trillion dollars. The Saudis also hold another trillion in our stock market. This does not even hit on how much stake Communist China has and own in America along with other foreign interests.
If would take only Saudi pulling their money from under and this country would fall.
Include into the equation of no jobs, this country produce next to nothing anymore, we have become a service industry. I would not be so cocky if I were you because American politicians and Presidents have made us just as vulnerable.
We have had Corporate America pushing government policies through Republicans that are destroying us. It started with Reagan and was wrapped up with the first Pres. Bush and Pres. Clinton at the urging of Corporate America, NAFTA and Free Trade and passing it off as capitalism that is good for America. Pres. Clinton felt that he had to go along with such destructive policies due to the majority controlled Congress in order to get any of the things that he wanted done, accomplished. We are in a very sad place as a country because so many choose to remain blind following after all the Republican pundits out there spinning the heads of those such as A CENTRISTS above.
Unlike D Walker, I don’t think that the current United States position is really the result of a certain political ideology as much as it is just the result of globalization as a whole. One big difference between the United States and Zimbabwe that I don’t really see ending too soon is the United States’ global advantage in the agriculture sector. One unique thing about United States geography and climate is that it goes far enough east/west as well as north/south in just the right place to have the capability for not only more agricultural diversification than Zimbabwe, but also more diversification than most of the rest of the world. And if A CENTRIST thinks that current agricultural policy takes from the rich and gives to the poor he/she really has no clue what they’re talking about, it’s heavily biased toward the rich.
You I totally agree with you concerning the agriculture prospects here in America, and because of this, no one will have to starve to death in America. We do however need to scrap the idea of using food to produce ethanol.
We also are now importing our vegetables, if that isn’t political ideology, I don’t know what is.