"Zimbabwe economy's woes keep adding up; Shortage of paper to print currency" by Los Angeles Times | July 17, 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.
So it was a GERMAN COMPANY that was helping to prop up the monster, hmm?
The printing operation drastically slowed. Two-thirds of the 1,000-strong workforce was ordered to take a leave, and two of the three money-printing shifts were canceled. The result on the streets was an immediate cash crunch.
"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 Los Angeles 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, paid muscle to terrify the population into voting for Mugabe in the June 27 presidential runoff.
If the regime can't pay the security forces on which it relies, it would face economic paralysis - and potential collapse. Zimbabwe's economic meltdown harks back to the collapse of its major export industry, commercial farming, after Mugabe's controversial land reform program early in the decade. That left the nation starved of foreign exchange, but government spending went on.
How did it do that? It printed money. But printing more and more money without an increase in productivity fueled rampant hyperinflation.
Did you SEE YOUR FUTURE, America?!
As companion pieces, please see: Ron Paul Revolution Excerpts: Economic Freedom and Ron Paul Revolution Excerpts: Money.
The highest denomination is now 50 billion Zimbabwean dollars (worth one US dollar on the street). Despite the recent currency shortage, the Zimbabwe dollar has continued to slide against the US dollar.
Probably the only place that has.
Hey, Americans!!!
Here is a place you can move to where your money will actually buy something!!!!
Apart from the paper crisis, the real fear inside Fidelity is that its software license for the European bank note design technology that it uses could be withdrawn because of new sanctions threatened against the Mugabe regime, the staffer said.
You mean it hasn't already? WTF?
The internal workings of Fidelity Printers have been one of the Mugabe regime's best-kept secrets for years. But as the government looks increasingly tenuous, institutions that were once impossible to penetrate are showing cracks.
Fidelity might be the beating heart of the regime, but the staffer revealed an institution under severe pressure. The place pulsates with sound and smells of ink. The printing machines are old and often break down, requiring spare parts from Germany, which will no longer come.
--MORE--"So GERMANY was propping up the brutal dictator, huh?
PFFFFFTTTT!
"Mugabe says Britain wants to seize country's resources; Inflation soars to record level" by MacDonald Dzirutwe, Reuters | July 17, 2008
HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe accused Britain yesterday of trying to seize control of resources in the devastated African nation, as his government announced that inflation had risen to 2.2 million percent.
Zimbabweans are suffering chronic shortages of meat, maize, fuel, and other basic commodities due to the collapse of the once prosperous economy. In Washington, President Bush said he wanted a peaceful end to the political turmoil in Zimbabwe and was examining more U.S. sanctions after a U.N. resolution was blocked by Russia and China.
Bush told reporters after meeting Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore:
"We deeply care about the plight of the citizens of Zimbabwe, and we hope there's a peaceful resolution soon."
Seeing as the West is killing his money supply, I would expect there to be a "peaceful" regime change soon!
Here's another coup you may not have noticed:
"Vuk Jeremic, Serbia's young, pro-European foreign minister, said in an interview in Paris yesterday that his country's new pro-Western government was determined to mend ties with Brussels and Washington."
Do I smell a rigged election somewhere?
