The situation over there has been in a tailspin due to Jimmy Carter and Andrew Young. Back in 1979 a power sharing government was elected but Carter and Young insisted that Mugabe take power. Recently Mugabe has declared war on white owned farms with plans to nationalize 4,000 white farms. The Zimbabwe Supreme Court has ruled the action illegal. But Mugabe has mobilized war veterans to murder and drive the farmers from the land. Mugabe says that he will not pay for the land. He says Britain should compensate the farmers because they are descendants of British settlers who seized the land from peasants in the first place. Britain has refused, saying it does not approve of land seizures. The large commerical farms produce most of the Zimbabwe's food and the siezures have ruined the country. The Commercial Farmers Union, which represents the farmers, says white farmers have willingly sold the Government 1,877 farms totaling 8.4 million acres since 1980. Another 46 farms were seized, but the Government paid in full for them.
I kinda of suspect that those farms were really paid in full. According to marketplace or according to an arbitrary prices decided by the Mugabe regime?
From the BBC on Nov. 27, 2007 Mugabe announced that he has drawn up a list of more than 1,700 mainly white-owned farms he intends to seize without payment. Mr Mugabe has said if the farmers want to be paid for their land the money would have to come from Britain, the former colonial power. He said this was just the first round of the government's land seizures, saying many more farms might be needed. The official list of farms being seized, totalling five million hectares, contains some of the country's most efficient and profitable farms. Economists and agricultural experts have warned the government's plans will result in the complete collapse of Zimbabwe's agricultural industry, the country's biggest single foreign currency earner. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/34922.stm
Zimbabwe: Zanu-PF Stashes the Cash Leading members of President Robert Mugabe's regime and their business allies are transferring tens of millions of US dollars out of Zimbabwe to safe havens to avoid the threat of tightening sanctions and the possibility of financial scrutiny by a power-sharing government. Almost all of these transactions are illegal under Zimbabwe's foreign exchange laws and Africa Confidential has seen bank documents that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Governor Gideon Gono has violated the monetary rules he claims to enforce. This capital flight drives inflation  now officially reckoned at 2.2 million per cent  and is set to overtake the previous world inflation champions Brazil, Argentina and Peru within the next three months. Draining the coffers Most of the politicians and businesses taking out the money use established Western banks and insurance companies to make the transfers. They take advantage of the fact that several big financial institutions quote their shares on the Stock Exchange in Harare, as well as those in Johannesburg and London. The money is drained out of Zimbabwe to either Britain or South Africa with minimal institutional scrutiny, after which it is transferred to even safer, offshore jurisdictions or to financial centres in East Asia. Within the region the favoured destinations are Namibia and South Africa, where the ruling elite have invested heavily in property, usually registered in the names of their spouses or children. As opinion on the legitimacy of President Mugabe's regime changes in the Southern African Development Community (Botswana has called on the African Union to deny recognition), we hear that senior members of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front now prefer to move their money to financial institutions in Malaysia and China through large trading companies or multinational banks.
Whatever Mugabe can't steal, he is nationalizing. Foreign investment is pulling out if he still can. I doubt it.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Friday handed the country's only Olympic medalist in Beijing a $100,000 cash reward for her performance at the games. Just think if Bush did that same for phelps and the other medalist. The US would be bankrupt.
If it is $100 000 Zimbabwe dollars I think he would have plenty to give, wonder what can $100 000 buy nowadays? One tissue paper?
From Aug. 1, the Zimbabwe currency was re-denominated by removing 10 zeros from a Zimbabwe dollar. The highest note was 100 billion. http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/banks65.18569.html
It seems that the plan was to wipe everyone out with inflation. I wonder if Zimbawe will start the process again?
The change to wipe out zero only helps the printers. As long as the fundamentals of their economy is unchanged, I guess they will keep repeating the process again and again, that Olympian better spend her money fast!