{"id":1149,"date":"2008-10-18T22:42:05","date_gmt":"2008-10-18T21:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1149"},"modified":"2008-10-18T22:42:05","modified_gmt":"2008-10-18T21:42:05","slug":"how-high-can-inflation-in-zimbabwe-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=1149","title":{"rendered":"How high can inflation in Zimbabwe go?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the mid 1970s, I served as a Special Adviser in the Labour Government led by Harold Wilson and Jim Callahgan. I remember that in 1975 inflation in the UK reached an annual rate of 25%. It was suggested by the media at the time that no modern nation state could survive such a rate of inflation for very long and it was rapidly reduced by a tough incomes policy.<br \/>\nYet what has been happening in Zimbabwe in recent years defies comprehension. A friend of mine was on holiday in Zambia this summer and bought this Zimbabwean 100 billion dollar note.<br \/>\n<center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Zimbabwe.jpg\"  border=3><\/center><br \/>\nAt the time (end of July 2008), it was worth around 40 pence.<br \/>\nThe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/africaandindianocean\/zimbabwe\/3167379\/Zimbabwe-inflation-hits-231-million-per-cent.html\">latest news<\/a> suggested that inflation in Zimbabwe has now risen to 231 million %. Meanwhile the power-sharing agreement concluded in September between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai has still not been implemented.<br \/>\nI have no idea how any economy can function with such an inflation rate or how the people of Zimbabwe are surviving. This <a href=\"http:\/\/www.irinnews.org\/Report.aspx?ReportId=80930\">story<\/a> tries to give a sense of what life is like in such appalling circumstances<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the mid 1970s, I served as a Special Adviser in the Labour Government led by Harold Wilson and Jim Callahgan. I remember that in 1975 inflation in the UK reached an annual rate of 25%. It was suggested by the media at the time that no modern nation state could survive such a rate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}