10 November 2010

Electron seamstress

You might notice the new picture behind my title and header.

That is a Zimbabwean One Hundred Trillion Dollar note.

That's right.  We're not talking about a budget here.  This is one single bill.  And there are more of them.

Let's put this into perspective:  The current denominations of US currency are:  $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100.

The largest note the United States Treasury has ever printed is $100,000.

How did this happen?  Time was that Zimbabwean currency was relatively stable.  How did they get from that point to issuing cash that was worth more as toilet paper than actual money?  Simple:  They attempted to print their way out of overwhelming debt.

They failed.  Because, um, racism.

Just kidding.  They failed because they attempted to circumvent the laws of economics, which is on the level of attempting to fly to the moon by flapping your arms.

And now America is attempting to do the same thing.

God help us.

1 comment:

Intelligent commentary is welcome. Spam will be annihilated. Stupidity will be mocked.