Lack of bank note paper threatens Zimbabwe economy From the Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/na…14,0,3947241.story?page=2
The country, already suffering hyperinflation, is on the brink of financial collapse, analysts say.
From a Times Staff Writer July 14, 2008
HARARE, ZIMBABWE — It has come to this: Zimbabwe is about to run out of the paper to print money on.
Fidelity Printers & Refiners, the state-owned company that tirelessly churns out bank notes for the Robert Mugabe regime, was thrown into a crisis early this month after a German company stopped supplying bank note paper because of concerns over Zimbabwe's recent violent presidential election, widely seen as fraudulent by international observers.
The printing operation drastically slowed. Two-thirds of the 1,000-strong workforce was ordered to go on leave, and two of the three money-printing shifts were canceled.
The result on the streets was an immediate cash crunch.
=> das ist die unvermeidliche Deflation unmittelbar NACH der Hyperinflation.
"If you think this currency shortage is bad, wait two weeks. By then it will be a disaster," said a senior Fidelity staffer, who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity because he would face dismissal and possible violence for talking to a Western journalist. The paper will run out in two weeks, he said.
Fidelity Printers is Mugabe's lifeline. It prints the money to pay the police, soldiers and intelligence organs that keep the regime in power. Lately, the money has been used to set up a network of command bases around the country staffed by liberation war veterans and youth militias, hired muscle to terrify the population into voting for Mugabe in the June 27 presidential runoff election.
If the regime can't pay the security forces on which it relies, it would face economic paralysis -- and potential collapse.
...As hyperinflation spiraled last year, Fidelity printed million-dollar notes, then 5-million, 10-million, 25-million, 50-million. This year, it has been forced to print 100-million, 250-million and 500-million notes in rapid succession, all now practically worthless. The highest denomination is now 50 billion Zimbabwean dollars (worth a U.S. dollar on the street).
Despite the recent currency shortage, the Zimbabwean dollar has continued to slide against the U.S. dollar and shopkeepers are still increasing their prices steeply. The price of the state-owned Herald newspaper has leaped from 200,000 Zimbabwean dollars early this month to 25 billion now. Before the crunch, a beer at a bar in Harare, the capital, cost 15 billion Zimbabwean dollars. At 5 p.m. July 4, it cost 100 billion ($4 at the time) in the same bar.
An hour later, the price had gone up to 150 billion ($6).
"People are aware that printing money is also one of the causes of the inflation.
=> Die direkt undoffensictlich Betroffenenhaben an dieser trivialen Erkenntnis im Gegensatz zu sovielen westlichen Geld"experten" keine Zweifel. Jeder Zweifel waere absurd...
... Now that the production has slowed, the pressure of working full time is replaced with the terror of being laid off, he said. The plant is planning to use paper from a local producer, but that manufacturer already has trouble meeting its orders for paper for checks....
"They were just printing money to pay all the militias," Tendei said. "Inflation is now out of control. Nobody can control it."
For most Zimbabweans, the economic crisis boils down to one thing: how to put food on the table. It's a difficult trick when you have no job, or if the bus fare costs more than your pay, and the prices in shops keep going up.
"Everyone is struggling to keep up with this mounting pressure, day by day," said John Robertson, an independent economist here. "It's a thing that gradually creeps up. Some people have already succumbed. Some factories have closed. More are likely to succumb as prices rise."
... "Everything is imploding at the same time. You just get the sense that they can't hold on much longer."
Everyone at Fidelity Printers knows the money printing is propping up Mugabe, the staffer said. Despite the threat to their jobs, some secretly hope for breakdowns and paper shortages, he said.
"I'm happy about this crisis caused by the unavailability of paper," the staffer said. "Because maybe it might lead to a change of things in this country."
grüsse auratico
Zwar koennte man anhand der aktuellen SHORT-Beschraenkungen auf genau 15 Banken (die primary dealers plus derzeit Fannie und Freddie) lange Diskussionen um deren offenbar noetigen und den freie Markt pervertierenden Artenschutz im ach so freien US-amerikanischen Boersenarkt fuehren. Aber das war NICHT das Thema hier und wird anderswo gefuehrt.
. Ihr macht das schon. Lasst Euch vom PPT nicht beirren. Immer schön die Fahne der Wahrheit hochhalten!
as investors continued to search out safe havens from sharply falling equity markets.