How hyperinflation can make you a trillionaire
Religion & Liberty Online

How hyperinflation can make you a trillionaire

Note: This is post #104 in a weekly video series on basic economics.

Imagine having to pay $417.00 per sheet of toilet paper. That actually happened in Zimbabwe. 

As Alex Tabarrok notes, around 2000, Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, was in need of cash to bribe his enemies and reward his allies. He had to be clever in his approach, given that Zimbabwe’s economy was doing lousy and his people were starving. Sow what did he do? He tapped the country’s printing presses and printed more money.

Zimbabweans became millionaires, says Tabarrok, but a million dollars may have only been enough to buy you one chicken during the hyperinflation crisis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78-BlZXm7wA

(If you find the pace of the videos too slow, I’d recommend watching them at 1.5 to 2 times the speed. You can adjust the speed at which the video plays by clicking on “Settings” (the gear symbol) and changing “Speed” from normal to 1.25, 1.5 or 2.)

Click here to see other videos in the Introduction to Economics series.

Joe Carter

Joe Carter is a Senior Editor at the Acton Institute. Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, a communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. He is the editor of the NIV Lifehacks Bible and co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).