Zimbabwe Hyperinflation

 

  

Zimbabwe Hyperinflation

Note: The Monopoly example will be based on the Hong Kong version of Monopoly. 

Let's say that you are playing Monopoly with your friends Tom and James. Tom has the most money in the game, James is doing decent and you are struggling financially after a few major setbacks. After a while, you land on a hotel owned by Tom. The future looks bleak until both Tom and James both have to go to the toilet. You have three choices to save your game; 1. Leave the room. 2. Take your chance with the dice and hope for the best. Or, you could choose to print more money. (option 3) Let's say that you choose to print more money. You go to the printer and print ten more five hundred dollar bills. You now have over 5 times the amount needed to buy the most expensive property on the board, The Peak. 

Now with your newfound riches, you turn the tables and you become the richest and most powerful player. After an hour, a new development has occurred, everyone now has more money from either printing or receiving it from rent. BUT, there are still the same amount of hotels and houses to build. Because of this, the value of your money falls. Mui Wo is now worth 300 dollars while the Peak is now worth 10,000 dollars! Now, a 10 dollar bill is more than 10 times its original price. The money you have is now worth less than what it was. Now, Mui Wo is worth 1000 dollars and The Peak is worth a staggering 10,000 dollars! Now, the purchasing power of your money falls. This entire fiasco was not just a fairy tale made up by me to scare little kids. This is called Hyper-

inflation and it was what happened in a country called Zimbabwe.

 Zimbabwe is a landlocked country in Southern Africa that is home to many natural wonders, such as; Victoria Falls, the largest waterfall in the world! Zimbabwe is also one of the few places where you can see all of the Africa Big Five together. (A name given to the hardest animals in Africa to hunt by hunters.) They are the Lion, Leopard, Rhino, Elephant and the African Buffalo. But all good things aside, it's time to step into the dark times of Zimbabwe… 

Back in the 2000’s, Zimbabwe was ruled by a guy called Robert Mugabe. Mugabe had been making some bad decisions with the country and was deeply in debt. To combat this, Mugabe introduced some short sided ‘solutions’ to fix the problem. In other words, he started printing money, but as we know from our Monopoly example printing money does not fix things in the long run. Therefore, after a few weeks of printing money, the country was in the world's second highest case of inflation. (First place was post-war Hungary) Money started to lose value, in days or in some cases even hours! A loaf of bread now costs 1 million dollars! Vending machines and Atms were not working due to the enormous amount of money required! 

Out of the whole fiasco, some interesting dollar bills were made, the 250 million dollar bill, the 1 billion dollar bill and the 100 trillion dollar bill! These bills are now a one of a kind bill and they show just how bad hyper-inflation can be. 

Thanks for reading!