Stephen Groom Taking a shot at becoming a Poker Pro

Zimbabwe cuts 10 zeros from dollar

Today sees Zimbabwe removing 10 zeros from the value of the Zimbabwe dollar changing the value of Z$10,000,000,000 to just Z$1.

The move comes after Giesecke and Devrient, based in Munich, said it would no longer deliver watermarked paper to President Robert Mugabe’s Reserve Bank.

The Zimbabwe dollar has been ravaged by hyperinflation due to Robert Mugabe's bankrupt regime printing more money to pay it's bills. This has caused an official inflation rate of 2,200,000% which is argued to be much higher by experts.

Banknotes could not even be used any more and the currency was until today issued in the form of Bearer Cheques, marked with an expiry date. The bank also more recently moved on to special "Agro Cheques" of which the biggest was recently printed as Z$100 billion. Coins have been rendered useless in Zimbabwe too and have been obsolete for years.

Just to give you an idea of how worthless the Zimbabwe Dollar was in real terms, yesterday a can of coke cost Z$600 billion, bread Z$200 billion and a beer was Z$1.8 trillion!

Given that prices are almost doubling daily, I don't think that today's move to cut ten zeros will begin to help the economy of Zimbabwe, only prolong complete disaster. If they cut 10 zeros of the price of everything, surely this means that they will also cut 10 zeros from your salary, which still means most people couldn't afford a beer from their annual pay cheque.