Sunday 18 January 2009

Hyperinflation and then some

According to this BBC report, Zimbabwe is introducing a Z$100 trillion note, which is currently worth about US$30 or £20.

Just for the record, according to Steve H. Hanke at the Cato Institute Zimbabwe's inflation rate is 89,700,000,000,000,000,000,000% This is as at 14/11/08. There is an interesting note on the web page for Zimbabwe's inflation rate,
Since mid-November 2008, the weekly update of the HHIZ has been put on hold. The market-based price data from Zimbabwe have deteriorated and, at present, cannot be used to update the HHIZ. HHIZ updates will be resumed as soon as the quality of the data reaches a satisfactory level.
So we can't even estimate the inflation rate in Zimbabwe. We just know its got to be a lot more than what ever that number above is!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

As of July last year, Zimbabweans could not purchase a loaf of bread with a $100 billion dollar note. A kilogram of sausage meat cost $170 billion. A can of baked beans cost $50 billion and the added cost of bog paper averaged to about $22 million for a single sheet of 2-ply.

We may have laughed back then; yet, those prices now look pretty good in retrospect with inflation now at a rude 511.8 billion percent (U.S std) on Monday Jan 19th @ 1800 hours, 51 mins, and 40 secs.

Julian said...

Paul,

Great to have you back blogging - :-)

Julian

Peter Cresswell said...

I concur.

Great to have you back online, Paul. :-)

Anonymous said...

We love you Paul!!