Woo Hoo!I remember years ago actually ordering magazine subscriptions through outfits like Publishers Clearing House not because they offered the best rates (although the rates were quite reasonable) but because I might be rewarded for my stamp-licking efforts by winning the sweepstakes jackpot.
Back then it was a million dollar grand prize.
Oh, how I imagined using that amount of money! The wonderfully luxurious things I’d be able to buy! My oh my!
But a million dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to, does it?
Imagine if Ed McMahon and his crew arrived at your front door with balloons, confetti and champagne, as well as a huge oversized poster board check for ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
Still pretty great right?
Well, if you lived in, say, Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe and a Prize Patrol showed up at your door with a big ass check for a million ZIMBABWEAN dollars, you’d probably sic the dog on them for wasting your freakin’ time!
The estimated cost of just printing a big check like that would have exceeded its value countless times over.
Put another way, after the crew was gone and you were left holding that big rectangle, it would cost you way more than it was worth to use a trash bag to toss it away.
The check would be worth about 0.00003125 American CENTS!
For all intensive purposes, worthless.
Many third-world nations have notoriously huge numerical denominations in comparison to the base units of currency for industrialized economies like the US and Europe.
But the Zimbabwe Dollar used to actually be worth MORE than the US Dollar. Kinda like the British Pound and European Euro are now. Currently the exchange rate is something like 1 US Dollar = 33.2 Billion Zimbabwean Dollars. That's billion, with a B.
What happened? Well, basically, this guy:
Robert Mugabe.
While he steals elections, runs his country like a mobster, and is unabashedly racist and homophobic, his people are being forced into a medieval-like barter economy since the cash is literally not even worth the paper it’s printed on.
But at least everyone can call themselves billionaires, right?
Woo Hoo!