Zimbabwe economy announces new currency

Jonny69 · 30-07-2008, 16:57

Zimbabwe have announced they are slashing ten zeroes off it's currency so ten billion old Zimbabwe Dollars will now be one Zimbabwe Dollar.

Been following their economy with interest since we have a Zim client here who need to debase the currency in their database. They have numbers in the quadrillions (1,000,000,000,000,000) and now the database can't handle numbers any bigger. Shame it's "only" a US quadrillion and not a proper quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) but the numbers are still pretty impressive. Ironically they have numbers that big to two decimal places for some reason

More on the debase here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7532702.stm

More on the history of the currency and hyperinflation at 10,500,000% here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwean_dollar

Burble · 30-07-2008, 17:41

One of the girls at work has family in Harare and she'd mentioned how many billions of $ were needed to buy things. Not that anyone there can afford anything anyway.

30-07-2008, 16:57	#1
Jonny69 Noob Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Socialist Republik of Kent Posts: 5,032	Zimbabwe economy announces new currency Zimbabwe have announced they are slashing ten zeroes off it's currency so ten billion old Zimbabwe Dollars will now be one Zimbabwe Dollar. Been following their economy with interest since we have a Zim client here who need to debase the currency in their database. They have numbers in the quadrillions (1,000,000,000,000,000) and now the database can't handle numbers any bigger. Shame it's "only" a US quadrillion and not a proper quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) but the numbers are still pretty impressive. Ironically they have numbers that big to two decimal places for some reason More on the debase here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7532702.stm More on the history of the currency and hyperinflation at 10,500,000% here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwean_dollar __________________

30-07-2008, 17:41	#2
Burble Rocket Fuel Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 7,826	One of the girls at work has family in Harare and she'd mentioned how many billions of $ were needed to buy things. Not that anyone there can afford anything anyway.