| As a Zimbabwean myself, I would have to say that most of the posters here totally missed the point of the site. The site was not a critique of quantitative easing. It is a commentary on the Zim government's attack on a newspaper that dared to criticize their fiscal policy (in this case a whole lot of printing money, or ... ahem quantitative easing). The paper then fought back, using this effectively worthless money (available in huge quantities, and cheaper than paper), to front their guerrilla campaign. Looking at the box of Zim dollars under my desk, you can see how the currency got steadily worse (physically), as the currency got steadily worse (economically). The last straw was the EU sanctions that then prevented the German company from exporting banknote 'paper' to Zimbabwe ... the notes after that were sad. Really sad. Interestingly, at the height of the Zim crisis, a friend of mine in Germany sent me a couple of notes from the hyper inflation days in Germany (apparently, even now, there are still so many of those notes around that they are not worth much). The 1919 '50 mark' note feels like real money (quite oily too), while the 1923 '500 million mark' note, is just a plain paper bill, printed on one side, with just a bit of colour. When the govt starts printing money on paper, instead of cotton, then you know you are in big trouble. I suppose the point I was trying to make, was that while you can debate the similarities between the Zim situation and the Fed's quantitative easing, the site is really about the fight between one paper and the Mugabe government. Incidentally, the Zim Dollar died a couple of years ago. The only currency you will find in widespread use, is the South African Rand, and the US Dollar. |