Zero’d out
If I asked you to tell me, right now off the top of your head, how many zeroes there are in a trillion or a quantillion, could you do this? Don’t turn to Google (the vast majority of Zimbos do not have Google to turn to), take a guess first.
Zeroes are a big topic of conversation. Despite the fact we’ve been dealing with zeroes for such a long time, people are still confused. One friend commented that he was never taught these kind of numbers in school. Another friend has said that it goes up in 1000s – e.g. a billion is one thousand million, a trillion is one thousand billion. What comes next though? And can anyone tell me if a zentillion exists? “Forget quadrillions,” one friend quipped, “Zentillions will be here soon”. I’m not sure if the figure even exists or if he’s winding me up.
Another friend who started work on Monday said to me he felt as if he was starting a brand new job, and that was his first day when he didn’t have a clue what was going on. The numbers he was working with a couple of weeks before the holiday period are something completely different now.
“What did you do” I asked.
He replied: “I just gave up and played solitaire on my computer all day”.
OK… so here’s my next mind-boggler. If you are quoted 10 Trillion for a service today, how many zeroes is that now? When you have that figure in your mind, please add back the thirteen zeroes removed by Gideon Gono’s decrees over the years. How much is 10 Trillion dollars plus thirteen extra zeroes, and what is the name for that figure?
Now imagine trying to write a check for that amount – squeezing all the zeroes into the tiny little space provided in a cheque. No wonder Gono has had to drop zeroes! The debate now is whether our Reserve Bank genious (so brilliant he was offered a job at the World bank – ha ha) will drop more zeroes or just give up and let people trade in forex, which they are doing now anyway.
I have very little doubt that most people reading this post will have zero idea what 10 Trillion is worth in a real-life context. Neither do I, but as a Zimbabwean I can’t just shake my head in disbelief (although we all do all the time); to survive, Zimbabweans need to know what 10 Trillion is worth today – in real-life terms (what will it buy?), and we also need to know what it is worth in real money terms (is this a lot of money or not?).
For example, I can tell you that on Monday, 120 billion would buy 100 South African Rands. In the supermarket, R10 would buy a loaf of bread.
So going back to the mind-boggler ten Trillion.
1 Rand is 120,000,000,000,000 / 100 = 1,200,000,000 (= Z$1,2 Billion)
Ten trillion = 10,000,000,000,000 / 1,200,000,000 = Rands 8,333.00
Or … ten Trillion will buy you 833 loaves of bread.
Is ten trillion a lot of money then? Well, yes it is, because who goes out and buys 833 loaves of bread at a time? But the only way I know its a lot of money is because I labouriously worked it out and I needed it in loaves of bread and Rands to make it meaningful. I confess that my maths is appalling and I’m not feeling to confident that I have worked it out correnctly, even now. And I used my computer’s calculator. I kept counting and re-counting the zeroes on my screen to be sure I hadn’t tapped in one too many noughts. A slip of a finger makes a world of difference! I have friends who can do this in their heads while standing in a shopping aisle. I bow to them and call them geniuses – especially since the figures then are not nice numbers but could be something like Z$ 1,63 billion — aaaaarrrrgghhhhhhhhhhh.
Going back to the bread example… if one loaf costs R10, then it means that that single loaf of bread costs Z$12,000,000,000 which is Z$12 billion. Or does it?
It is very very important to always remember the thirteen zeroes Gono has lopped off. This simple fact means that a loaf of bread ACTUALLY costs Z$120,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. I think (I’m groping in the dark here) that that means a loaf bread now costs us Z$120 Sixtillion. (Is there such thing as Sixtillion – please feel free to correct me in the comments!)
Not many people buy 833 loaves of bread but occasionally a (rich) person might want to buy themselves a new computer, or a car. Imagine how many zeroes that would generate if quoted in Zim dollars! Fortunately, most people aren’t receptive to using Z$ anymore – but the sad thing is that for every day we deal in the sensible values of Rands and US Dollars marks yet another day where we witness the death of the Zim dollar, relentlessly smashed into the pieces by stupid economic polices and incompetence. (When I asked a street vendor how much her wares were a couple of days ago, she responded quickly and confidently – in Rands).
Here’s the real mind-boggler: in 1980, immediately after Independence, we had parity and Z$1 = £1. Just imagine spending 120 Sixtillion Pounds on a loaf of bread. It is simply unimaginable. But the economy, under the management of Zanu PF over the last 28 years, has been dropped to these unimaginable, incomprehensible levels, and with it we’ve witnessed massive poverty and social collapse. All the investment in health and education during Zanu PF’s 28 years in power have not translated into a thriving economy and a nation of prosperous happy people. Any good they have done in the time they have been in charge is being wiped out along with the Zimbabwe dollar.
The Zim dollar true value these days rests in the way it usefully measures the Zanu PF led government’s failures.
Zanu PF must go. Anyone who thinks that Zimbabweans are being unreasonable or unfair to demand the end of this regime must please ask themselves how willing they’d be to pay 120 Sixtillion POUNDS for a loaf of bread. My guess is that they would also want a new government to take over, and the sooner the better.
January 8th, 2009 11:56
It really doesn’t matter if your math is right. In a hyperinflation, the normal processes cease to make sense. In a short while a google of Z$ won’t buy a loaf of bread and shortly after that the number needed will exceed the number of subatomic particles in the known universe.
January 8th, 2009 13:54
looks as if Bob is making the $0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.1
of an USA $ just to think that at one time the dollar used to be stronger that the USA dollar. Gone are those days.
January 8th, 2009 14:05
Hope has written some very moving comments about the state of the Zimbabwean dollar. I learnt about the Great Depression and the state of the German Deutschmark when a teenager and I believe Zimbabwe is a trillion times worse off and yet how can we save Zimbabwe? I don’t have an answer, but I would like to enter this dialogue in my own small way. Zimbabwe is going through a Great Depression, the world is going through a recession which could become a depression, but already Zimbabwe is in a multiple Great Great times Great to the nth power Depression because of its own depression and the world recession. As a Buddhist, I hope that Robert Mugabe is reborn as a poor person in a country that has a zentillion dollar depression and he will see what it feels like for the people of Zimbabwe who don’t live in mansions like him and have to scrounge and beg to survive. Peace and Cmpassion to the suffering Zimbabweans.
January 8th, 2009 14:47
The people of Britain are appalled that you are in this state! Don’t believe Mugabe when he blames the British for your plight. We are ready to help. I agree that farms are, in time, handed back to the Africans who work them, but on a business basis not to people who cannot manage them. Take all farms into state ownership and get in foriegn experts to work the farms, for a wage, then teach local people who have shown aptitude agricultural management. When competent farmers are available end the contract of the foriegn workers. and hand over to local owners. This, of course should be done with NO political intervention.
January 10th, 2009 10:53
Thanks Effjay! My father bought our farm in 1922 with good British pounds and lots of them. He developed it, loved it and looked after it until 1979 when I took it over. We employed over 100 families, who lived and worked on the farm. We built houses and schools for our workers, laid on water and provided a football ground and kit amongst other things. We fed our workers on top of their wages and gave them kit to work in. We also gave them the best seed maize with which to grow their own crops.
The farm was taken in 2000 at gunpoint with no compensation whatsoever. Most of the workers’ houses were destroyed and the workers were chased off the farm with nowhere to go.
Why now should my farm be nationalised and given to foreign experts? Can they farm any better than we did? Will they treat their workers any better than we did? Will they train the local farmers any better than we did? After all the best training is to see a process done well, and that’s what we did.
Ask my workers who they would like back!
January 10th, 2009 15:35
Although Zimbabwe is as broken as any country on the planet ever could be, it offers a testament not to some inherent African inability to govern, but to a minority rule every bit as oppressive and inconsiderate of the welfare of its citizens as any ignominious white settler colonialists ever were, in fact much worse. The country’s economy in 1997 was the fastest growing in all of Africa. Now it has shrunk to next to nothing. A one time net exporter of maize, cotton, beef, tobacco, roses, and sugar cane, now people, including professional lawyers, doctors and teachers are fleeing in droves. although Zimbabwe has some of the richest farmland in Africa, people are now starving in their millions and children have pot bellies like miniature pregnant women.
How could the breadbasket of Africa have deteriorated to this? The answer is Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF. By his actions he has compiled something of a ‘how to’ manual for national destruction. Although some of his methods have been applied elsewhere, taken as a whole, his approach has been more radical and more comprehensive than that of any other despot. But Zimbabwe offers some important insights; it illustrates the prime importance of accountability as an anecdote to idiocy and excess. It highlights the lasting effects of decolonisation – limited Western influence on a continent coupled with a continued reluctance by African leaders to criticize their own. And, above all, it offers a warning about how much damage one man can do, very quickly.
January 11th, 2009 07:01
@EffJay –
EffJay’s comments show how little understanding the rest of the world has about Zimbabwe.
Britain handed power to Mugabe together with the perfect tools of dictatorship i.e. a raft of oppressive legislation and total state control of the mass media.
Britain feted Mugabe for years after independence, awarding him honorary degrees and ignoring his masss murders of the 1980’s.
Britain for years refused to grant asylum to many opposition supporters, sending them back to their doom in Zim.
Finally, Britain refuses to pay pensions to British-origin people who remained as civil servants in the ex-colony helping it to develop intoi the envy of the rest of Africa.
The last thing Zim needs is more inept and misguided meddling by British people, thank you.
Let me ask EffJay this question: why do you think it’s OK to get foreigners to work the farms? The farms were incredibly productive under the previous legitimate white African owners. After being chucked out by Mugabe, those same farmers are now helping produce food and cash crops in Zambia, Mozambique and Nigeria. Agriculture in Zim could be back on its feet within 6 months if any new government simply allows the previous farmers to return, even if for political reasons it simply leases rather than returns the land to them.
January 12th, 2009 17:00
Still behind the pengo inflation of hungary, where, they change 1 forint = 4 X 10 (power 29)pengo (old currency)
January 12th, 2009 17:15
Hungary, change unit of currency
on 18 Aug 1946, 1 forint (new currency) = 4 X 10 (power 29) pengo (old currency).
on 1 Jan 1927, 1 pengo (new currency) = 12,500 koruna (old currency)
January 14th, 2009 02:20
@True Grit
Couldn’t have said it more succintly. Ever falling on deaf ears though.
Leading elites know what they want in Africa. Exploitation of the masses.
And the rest of us are stunned and fascinated at this so called ‘educated leadership’ which in essence is kelptocratic idiocy.
Where conscience is akin to treason.
January 14th, 2009 21:02
Did Hungary’s currency have anything to do with the world wars?
Funny that – Rhodesia went through two world wars, and then the war of liberation with its associated sanctions, but nothing, nothing has ever been as devastating as Mugabe.
There must be a hall of honour for the most dispicable, disasterous, devious, dangerous, despotic, demonised, demagogue that ever walked the planet – ‘cos, his snivelling portrait deserves place of honour at the right hand of the devil.
January 16th, 2009 15:18
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7832601.stm
I thought we stopped the ability for more money to be printed?
January 17th, 2009 14:18
Hi,
Actually there is no such thing as a sixtillion or zentillion. This is the list of large numbers:
quadrillion
quintillion
sextillion
septillion
octillion
nonillion
decillion
undecillion
duodecillion
tredecillion
quattuordecillion
quindecillion (quinquadecillion)
sexdecillion (sedecillion
septendecillion
octodecillion
novemdecillion (novendecillion)
vigintillion
centillion
January 24th, 2009 10:08
At present rate, Zimbabwe inflation will soon beat that of Hungary in 1946, become the World’s worst ever.
But trust Zimbabwe can get own its feet again within a year, if Mugabe n ZANU-PF can be chucked away!
January 26th, 2009 01:52
@EffJay –
Effjay…..You just don’t get it do you. You fail to grasp the history of the country and the part Britain played in it.
As David said, could your foreigners do a better job than the origional commercial farmers….I very much doubt it and as far as nationalising farms…well we have seen how successful that has been. I’m sure that your suggestions would go down well if applied to your own farmers.
Read the history and understand it from a practical point of view.