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A License to Print Money

Where can you go to get a $1 billion dinner? Zimbabwe, where runaway inflation has given rise to mulit-million dollar loaves of bread as the country’s currency moves even further into collapse.

So could now be the best time to invest in Zimbabwe?

Oxford University economist Paul Collier writes in the Boston Review that Tanzania, which suffered a self-imposed economic train wreck in the 1970’s and 80’s, learned from its mistakes to become the best-run economy in today’s Africa, and that Germany’s experience with hyperinflation in the early 20th century “immunized Germans against macroeconomic folly.” Could Zimbabwe be next on the turnaround list?

Incidentally, inflation-causing monetary policy isn’t just for central banks any more. Recently, Hasbro added a feature on its website that lets you print your own Monopoly money at home.


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