Zimbabwe unveils 100 trillion dollar banknote | Hacker News Reader

Zimbabwe unveils 100 trillion dollar banknote

in.news.yahoo.com

19 pointsazharcs25 comments

Remember that Zimbabwe redemoninated in mid 2008 and took 10 zeroes off the bills, and it hardly seems worth mentioning but they took 3 zeroes off in 2006. That makes this new bill 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 which may or may not be 1 nonillion dollars. It's a lot of zeroes, I may have missed a few one way or another.

At this rate, I think the idea of a Googolplex note being in circulation isn't too far out of the realm of possibility.

Googolplex, no, but based on jws' post, they are well on their way to a googol.

Googol = 10 ^ 100, Googolplex = 10 ^ googol.

They're over a quarter of the way there!

(And I am finding very hard not to type Google.)

Make it your home page and you won't have to keep typing it into the URL bar.

They're over a quarter of the way there!

Only on a log scale. Which is what they're going to have to switch to pretty soon.

Technically, inflation is indeed an exponential process.

But there's no real need for me to take refuge in the word "technically" when we're talking about 231 million percent inflation. There's nothing technically exponential about that. (Sadly.)

At what point do you just admit defeat?

Gee, it's a good thing I don't know crap about monetary policy, or else I might think measures like this are just putting a bandaid on a bad situation rather than addressing the fact that Zimbabwe is under the control of an incompetent authoritarian dictator.

There was a good post recently on Mugabe in the other half of this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=433767

Mugabe wasn't horrible, and that's what's sad about all of this -- the land reform was a populist grab that was initiated when he started losing his grasp on the country. He's shown over and again that he's willing to put his position above the interests of the country in the last few years, and that's what'll make him go down in history as a despot rather than a hero.

For only $300 U.S., I could be a quintillionaire!

Hell yes!

That $300 US is really only $1 US circa 1930 - 1 to 1E15 returns, astounding!

That $300 US is really only $1 US circa 1930

What data set are you using? I got $12.39 (for $1 inflating from 1930-2009; $24.20 for $300 deflating backward in time) using the standard data set at Tom's Inflation Calculator: http://www.halfhill.com/inflation.html

Growth in the M1 index. http://www.shadowstats.com/

Thanks. I suppose you have read this: http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2008/09/shadowstats_deb....

Wait another few days and you could be a quintillionaire for less than the price of a cup of coffee.

Honest dumb question: If I had a Z$100 trillion note today and held it for 10 years after which time Zimbabwe made a modest comeback (hopefully) what would determine the value of that note then? Perhaps it'd be worth $10000? Or does the new government of the recovering nation just scrap all of the old currency and tell any note holders to cash in the old notes by such a date or they'll be worth nothing? What happens to hyper-inflated currencies in recovery mode?

what would determine the value of that note then?

The amount of specie in circulation, divided by the assets that back that specie.

Perhaps it'd be worth $10000?

That would represent massive deflation. Normally, governments print enough specie to at least keep up with the asset growth that backs it. If not, they might require massive taxation (recovery of existing specie) to cover their costs.

They get replaced by new currency. See Rentenmark on Wikipedia.

The article notes the security features being used in the new banknotes. Why would they bother? In a month, they'll be worth less than the paper they are made of.

Germany solved their hyperinflation problem in the 20s by backing up the currency with land. I wonder if Zimbabwe will have to do the same. That would be ironic.

man, now my site is really worthless: http://www.millionzimbabwedollarhomepage.com

instead of all this nonsense, they should just release a $1 Zillion dollar note and then they won't have to change it all the time.

I'd kind of like to grab one of these on ebay, actually.

so how long until we see an infinity bank note?

You mean a burner?

What does that mean?

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