Zimbabwe

=__Zimbabwe__=

 ZIMBABWE’S chart topping inflation reportedly at 24,000 % qualifies the nation as experiencing hyper inflation. Compare that to the next highest inflation of 40% in Burma.

__Causes of inflation: __
The government produced 17,000% of the money currently in circulation, this influx of money was not supported by an increase in goods or services and caused the value and the peoples faith in the paper money to become very low. People started to use the bartering method of trading instead of use of currency. The government tied to keep the money from losing more value by enacting laws that forced the value of the money, but that failed.

__A paper wrote in 2008:__ With the banks starved for currency, it is rationed by government mandate. Residents must arise in the middle of the night to obtain a number from bank security guards, giving the holders the privilege of standing in line for hours the next day to withdraw a paltry amount of money, perhaps the equivalent of one or two U.S. dollars.

The Zimbabwean economy is in a state of complete meltdown — the natural consequence of 28 years of rule by the tyrannical Robert Mugabe — producing inflation rates not seen since Germany in the 1920s, Greece and Hungary in the 1940s, and Yugoslavia in 1993. The nation’s annual inflation rate has risen from 1,000 percent in 2006, to 12,000 percent in 2007, to an immeasurable figure this year. In August, the government devalued the currency by chopping off 10 zeros. Had they not done so, the conversion rate would now be 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars to one U.S. dollar. The rate of inflation is so high that almost no one can afford imported goods like gasoline, causing transportation to cost more than most people can afford.

__Other problems include mass poverty and a lack of food:__
Stanford Mafumera, a security guard who was interviewed while waiting in line to obtain currency from a Zimbabwean bank, told the //Times// reporter that his government’s land-reform program was responsible for Zimbabwe’s economic destruction. As the report summarized Mafumera’s explanation: Mugabe’s regime had “chased away the white commercial farmers who had made the country a breadbasket … as well as donors from Britain and other European countries and the United States who sustained Zimbabwe’s starving millions for years.” Farms do not produce any food and the current charge for a bus ride is more than a days pay for most workers. Teachers subsadice their wages by selling snacks and supplies to their students.

__Aid__:
Zimbabwe's water, sanitation, and health crisis has received a $10 million boost from the government of Australia to help restore basic services as officials fight off an appalling cholera emergency. Half of the money will be directed at sanitation projects coordinated by the UN Childrens Fund (UNICEF). The other $5 million will help pay salaries of local health workers, many of whom have been sidelined by the country's enormous financial strains. Reacting to Australia's water assistance, acting State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Wednesday that Washington is reviewing its aid policy. "We've said basically that we want to see how this unity government performs before we can make any type of decision on providing assistance. Humanitarian aid we will continue to provide, but that was clearly a decision taken by the Australian government," he noted. The US has curtailed almost all except humanitarian aid to the former Harare government for several years to show its disapproval of the policies directed by President Robert Mugabe. But the US Agency for International Development (USAID) did contribute $6.2 million last December for Zimbabwe water, sanitation, and health programs.