Month: May 2016

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Is the strongest and most powerful nation on the planet headed for an apocalypse which will bring it to its knees?  We live in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable, and apocalyptic themes have become very common in books, movies, television shows and video games.  It is almost as if there is an unconscious understanding on a societal level that something very big and very bad is coming, even if the vast majority of the population cannot specifically identify what that is going to be.  Last week, the Global Challenges Foundation released a new report entitled “Global Catastrophic Risks 2016” in which they discussed various apocalyptic events that they believe could wipe out more than 10 percent of the population of our planet, and they warned that these types of events “are more likely than we intuitively think”…

Sebastian Farquhar, director at the Global Priorities Project, told the Press Association:

 

“There are some things that are on the horizon, things that probably won’t happen in any one year but could happen, which could completely reshape our world and do so in a really devastating and disastrous way.

 

“History teaches us that many of these things are more likely than we intuitively think. Many of these risks are changing and growing as technologies change and grow and reshape our world. But there are also things we can do about the risks.”

According to this new report, we are five times more likely to die from the various apocalyptic catastrophes that they analyzed than we are from a car accident.

In this article, I want to discuss some of the most important threats that they analyzed, in addition to adding some of my own to the list.  But first I want to mention that I do not believe that the Global Challenges Foundation is correct to identify climate change as one of the most significant catastrophic threats that humanity is facing.  Our climate has always been changing, and I do believe that we will see wild climate shifts in the years ahead.  However, human activity plays an exceedingly small role in all of this, and there is not very much that we can do to prevent what is going to happen either.  Most of the climate change that we are going to see in our future is going to be as a result of other catastrophes in this list, so I have not included it as a separate item.

With that being said, let’s quickly examine some of the potential threats identified by the Global Challenges Foundation…

Supervolcanoes

In various locations around the globe, there are gigantic supervolcanoes which could dramatically change the course of human history in a single moment by erupting.  In the United States, the Yellowstone supervolcano is becoming increasingly active, and a full-blown eruption could potentially be up to 2,000 times more powerful than the eruption of Mount St. Helens back in 1980.  As I mentioned the other day, major metropolitan areas such as Salt Lake City and Denver would be essentially destroyed, food production in this country would be virtually wiped out, and a “volcanic winter” would cool global temperatures by up to 20 degrees for up to several years.

Asteroids And Comets

This is something that the Obama administration is actually quite concerned about.  During his tenure, NASA has established a “Planetary Defense Coordination Office” that is in charge of tracking giant space rocks, and NASA is working to develop a method to destroy incoming asteroids using nuclear weapons.

Scientists admit that they only know about a small fraction of the near-Earth objects that are actually out there, and we get hit “by surprise” all the time.  If we were to get hit at just the right place by a very large object, like say just off the east coast of the United States, the consequences would almost be too horrible for words.

Today, 39 percent of all Americans live in counties that directly border a shoreline, and most of those people are along the east coast.  According to the University of California at Santa Cruz website, if a huge asteroid did slam into the Atlantic Ocean, it could potentially produce a 400 foot high tsunami that would sweep inland for many, many miles and kill millions upon millions of Americans in the process.

Natural Pandemics

The flu pandemic of 1918 killed approximately 50,000,000 people worldwide, and scientists assure us that it will happen again one day.

Yes, we have come a long way in fighting disease, but as we learned during the recent Ebola outbreak, a really nasty virus can grip the entire world with fear in a very short period of time.

Engineered Pandemics

This is probably even a bigger threat than natural pandemics, because now we have the technology to genetically alter naturally occurring diseases and make them even stronger.

Whether it is on purpose or by accident, it is only a matter of time before a genetically-modified superbug gets released into the general population, and when that day arrives it may make all previous pandemics look like a Sunday picnic.

Artificial Intelligence

Could someday entities that we have created turn on us and start killing us?

Some might refer to this as “the Terminator scenario”, and it is becoming more realistic with each passing day as our technological capabilities continue to increase at an exponential rate.

Geoengineering

The human race now has the capability to purposely modify the weather, and this means that we also have the capability to do a tremendous amount of damage.

Have you ever looked up and noticed long white trails criss-crossing the sky?  This is being done on purpose, and when they spray chemicals into our atmosphere it could have some very severe long-term consequences that the authorities may not be anticipating.

Nuclear War

Back during the Cold War, most Americans would have probably named this as the number one catastrophic threat facing America, but these days most people tend to believe that “the Cold War” is over.

So nobody has really objected while the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal has been reduced by about 95 percent, and Barack Obama insists that he would like to reduce it even further.

Meanwhile, both the Russians and the Chinese are rapidly modernizing their nuclear forces, and they both have developed hypersonic glide vehicles that can defeat any missile defense system that the U.S. can put up.

Our relationship with Russia has already gone down the tubes, and our relationship with China is rapidly deteriorating.  In fact, China just rejected a request for the USS John C. Stennis to make a routine port call at Hong Kong.  Most Americans assume that a war with either one of them is impossible, but the truth is that we may find ourselves in a conflict with both of them at the same time eventually.

The catastrophic threats above were ones that were mentioned in the report from the Global Challenges Foundation.  Below are some additional items that I would like to add to the list…

Islamic Terror

 

It isn’t just ISIS that we need to be concerned about.  Islamic terror is exploding all over the planet, and according to Wikipedia there have already been 95 such attacks globally so far in 2016.

 

Up until now, they have been killing us with guns and bombs, but what happens when they inevitably get their hands on chemical, biological or nuclear weapons?

 

Terror attacks using weapons of mass destruction could literally turn our society completely upside down virtually overnight, and it is only a matter of time until this starts happening.

 

Power Grid Failure

 

Someday you may wake up and discover that the power grid has totally failed.  Just try to imagine a world without any lights, cell phones, computers, televisions, ATMs, heating and cooling systems, credit card readers, gas pumps, cash registers, refrigerators or hospital equipment.  A massive electromagnetic pulse, either from the sun or as the result of a nuclear blast, could instantly plunge society back into the 1800s.

 

The EMP Commission spent years studying this, and they told Congress back in 20o8 that up to 90 percent of the U.S. population could be dead within one year of such an event due to starvation, disease and the breakdown of society.  So this is a threat that people better start taking seriously.

 

Cyberwar

 

World War III will not be fought like previous wars, and the Internet is one area where we are particularly vulnerable.  The Chinese, the Russians and the North Koreans have all been working very hard to develop their cyberwarfare capabilities, and I was recently told by someone that has deep connections inside the U.S. intelligence community that our power grid could be taken down with just the push of a button.  That is how easy it would be.

 

With each passing year, we are all becoming more and more dependent on the Internet.  So what would our lives be like if it was suddenly gone?

That is something to think about.

 

Economic Collapse

 

If you want to watch society melt down right in front of your eyes, just take away all of the goodies.  On The Economic Collapse Blog I have written more than a million words about the coming economic problems in this country.  We got a very small taste of what is approaching in 2008 and 2009, and yet most people do not seem to have taken that warning seriously.  Since that time, our long-term economic and financial problems have grown far more dire, and now the early chapters of a new economic crisis are unfolding right in front of our eyes, and yet still most people don’t seem to be alarmed.

 

If you want to see how devastating an economic collapse can be on a nation, just pick up a history book and start reading about the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Unfortunately, what we are heading for is going to be a whole lot worse than that.

 

Civil Unrest & Martial Law

 

As the economy collapses and other things on this list start happening, people are going to be absolutely freaking out.  A whole host of polls and surveys have shown that anger and frustration have been building up to unprecedented levels in this country, and at some point there is going to be a huge explosion.

 

Desperate people do desperate things, and we got small previews of what is coming in Ferguson and in Baltimore.  Violent crime rates are already rising in our major cities, and many among the elite are getting out while the getting is good.  In fact, 3,000 millionaires left the city of Chicago last year alone.

 

Of course whenever civil unrest erupts, the government responds by trying to regain control, and eventually things are going to get so bad in this nation that we will start to see martial law imposed in various areas.  We saw a little bit of this in Ferguson and in Baltimore, but that was nothing compared to what we will eventually experience.

 

Catastrophic Earthquakes

 

A historic earthquake along the New Madrid fault seismic zone, the Cascadia Subduction zone or any of the major faults in California could affect millions of lives, cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, and literally change the geography of our continent.

 

Personally, I believe that those of us that are fortunate enough to live long enough will witness historic earthquakes in all of those areas, and scientists assure us that all three zones are way overdue for major seismic events.

Even if just one of the catastrophic events that I have discussed above were to take place, it would completely change society.

Unfortunately, I believe that we are entering an era of history in which a “perfect storm” that consists of a confluence of these catastrophic events will shake this nation to the core.

via http://ift.tt/1WdQUhF Tyler Durden

Nearly half of American voters who support either Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump for the White House said they will mainly be trying to block the other side from winning, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Thursday. Simply put, as Reuters notes, the 2016 U.S. presidential election may turn out to be one of the world's biggest un-popularity contests.

"No matter who the Republican (nominee) is, I would have voted for him," poll respondent Monson said of her support for Trump. "It’s never going to be Clinton. Never."
 

 

As Reuters details, the results reflect a deepening ideological divide in the United States, where people are becoming increasingly fearful of the opposing party, a feeling worsened by the likely matchup between the New York real estate tycoon and the former first lady, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

"This phenomenon is called negative partisanship," Sabato said. "If we were trying to maximize the effect, we couldn't have found better nominees than Trump and Clinton."

 

Trump has won passionate supporters and vitriolic detractors for his blunt talk and hardline proposals, including his call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, his vow to force Mexico to pay for a border wall, and his promise to renegotiate international trade deals.

 

Former Secretary of State Clinton's appeal to voters seeking continuity with President Barack Obama's policies, has won her a decisive lead in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, but finds strong opponents among those disillusioned by what they see as lack of progress during Obama's tenure.

But the negative atmosphere is likely to reign, says Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University professor who has studied the rise of negative partisanship in America. Both campaigns probably will decide their best strategy is to work even harder to vilify each other, he said.

"It’s going to get very, very negative," he added.

That would play into a longer-term trend.

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A few years back I wrote an article comparing buy-one-suit-get-three-free sales by Jos. A. Bank to the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program. Then Jos. A. Bank’s management did something absolutely brilliant: In March 2014 it sold the company for $1.8 billion to Men’s Wearhouse, its closest competitor (and twice its outfit’s size).

Earlier this month Men’s Wearhouse — which in February changed its name to Tailored Brands — owned up to the reality that Jos. A. Bank would have faced on its own if it had not been acquired: that the Jos. A. Bank brand is basically worthless. It was destroyed by endless sales. Any suit-wearing man who was going to buy clothing from Jos. A. Bank already had at least four suits in his closet. Almost two years to the day since it bought Jos. A. Bank, Tailored Brandsannounced that it is writing down nearly two thirds of the value of the purchase and shutting down a quarter of Jos. A. Bank stores. Tailored Brands’ stock has collapsed, and the Jos. A. Bank story is coming to an unpleasant but predictable finale (especially for Tailored Brands shareholders).

The irony of QE or of Jos. A. Bank’s marketing strategy is that neither started out as an indefinite adventure. QE 1 was launched as a way to restore liquidity and prevent a run on the banks in the midst of the financial crisis. QE 2 and the rest that followed were the Fed’s attempt to engineer greater economic growth. I remember talking to Jos. A. Bank’s CFO in the late 2000s, and he was telling me how its “buy-one-get-X-free” strategy was temporary. However, then the crisis arrived, and slowly, one month at a time, its marketing campaign became permanent. Just as people who try heroin for the first time never intend to become drug addicts, neither the Fed nor Jos. A. Bank management wanted to become QE and “buy-one-get-X-free” junkies.

What do we learn from Jos. A. Bank’s sad story? Temporary-turned-permanent solutions may postpone the inevitable for a long time — to the point where observers like yours truly turn into boring, broken records. (I might shoot myself if I have to write another article about the Fed and QE.) But eventually, temporary-turned-permanent solutions lose their potency, as they are just papering over a core problem that they were never designed to solve, and that ugly reality comes to the surface. Ben Bernanke skillfully passed the Fed chair baton to Janet Yellen in 2014, but, as we learned with Jos. A. Bank, ownership of an unresolved problem doesn’t change the problem.

 

Vitaliy N. Katsenelson, CFA, is Chief Investment Officer at Investment Management Associates in Denver, Colo. He is the author of Active Value Investing (Wiley) and The Little Book of Sideways Markets (Wiley).  

His books were translated into eight languages.  Forbes Magazine called him "The new Benjamin Graham".   To receive Vitaliy’s future articles by email or read his articles click here.

 

Read: Ben Bernanke: Buy One Suit, Get Three Free

via http://ift.tt/1O4jX4Z Vitaliy Katsenelson

Yesterday we showed dramatic footage from various dash cams capturing the “apocalyptic” inferno that has made a burning ghost town out of Fort McMurray and is still raging in the heart of the Alberta oil sands. Today we present something more personal: in the following clip, Fort McMurray resident James O’Reilly watches on his iPhone as his home of almost 20 years burned to the ground just minutes after he and his wife fled the oncoming wildfire.

As The Star reports, when thousands fled the flames in Fort McMurray Tuesday most wondered if they’d ever see their homes again but James O’Reilly didn’t have to wonder: he watched his home of almost 20 years burn to the ground in 5 minutes.

The video shot by an indoor security camera about twenty minutes after O’Reilly and his wife had just barely enough time to grab some clothing and go, starts with a clear view of their living room, front window and two clown fish in a tank.

At the beginning, the only thing out of the ordinary is the intense crackling. Then, the south-facing window goes dark. Only minutes after the video begins, the window shatters and plumes of ashy smoke pour into the room. The smoke eventually blocks out the light, and all that is left is just sound, popping and breaking, until the video cuts out.

O’Reilly was in his truck, his wife in a vehicle behind, at Gregoire Lake south of town when he watched his home destroyed. “We’ve been talking for two days about all the things we left behind,” he said. “We left pretty much all our important papers, some important pictures.” He feels bad about the two clown fish left in the tank, just two of many animals that were left behind.

But for him and his wife the order to evacuate had come swiftly. The voluntary order came as he was driving. By the time they arrived home, it was mandatory, leaving them minutes to pack and go. “I could feel the wind and it wasn’t wind from outside. It was wind from the fire,” he said.

Despite the short notice, they’re very thankful for the firefighters and police who braved rapidly progressing flames to help them get out. “We’re better than most,” he said. “We made it through, and we have our camper, so we have a home on the road.”

The following is a time-lapse of the original 5 minute video.

via http://ift.tt/1rzYxCr Tyler Durden

In the wake of the Panama Papers being released, the U.S.Treasury announced that it will use existing powers in order to make two rule changes that are intended to stop tax evasion.

First, in a rule which amends the US Bank Secrecy Act, the Treasury said it will require financial institutions to verify the identity of the real people, or "beneficial owners", who control companies opening accounts with them. The aim is to prevent true owners of the account from being masked by the names of lawyers or other representatives.

 

The second rule, which the Financial Times reports is just a proposal at this stage, closes a loophole that Treasury says "allows foreign persons to hide assets in US accounts." The rule targets foreign owned US entities which can currently operate free of oversight by U.S. tax authorities, most prominently single member LLC's, making them report ownership and transaction data to the IRS.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said these steps would "increase transparency and disclosure requirements and empower law enforcement." Lew also acknowledged that these changes won't stop everything being done to work around the system:

"Despite these efforts, bad actors will continue to seek new ways to exploit the system."

According to the FT, Lew is urging Congress to pass three additional pieces of legislation that will further enhance the disclosure of beneficial owners; require U.S. banks to give more tax information on their customers to foreign counterparts; and approve pending tax treaties with Switzerland and Luxembourg.

These reporting requirements and due diligence activities will certainly come at a significant cost for banks, as much like the Sarbanes-Oxley rules did to companies, the new controls will simply overwhelm the current structure and cause banks to have to invest heavily in furthering their compliance departments.

And then of course, the fact remains that anyone who may be impacted by these changes can just pull their funds and re-route them through Rothschild Wealth Management & Trust, Reno, NV.

 

They will most assuredly help "navigate what is a complex financial landscape."

via http://ift.tt/1YdGz3n Tyler Durden

Submitted by Salil Mehta Of Statistical Ideas

The Flip-Flopping Pollster

How poor have the election forecasters been this year?  It is a topic many are discussing given the large number of upsets we’ve had during the Primaries.  For example, statistician Nate Silver (who started the campaign season proclaiming Trump had <2% chance of being nominated) by March 1 predicted with 94% probability that Trump would win Alaska (he lost). 

Silver then predicted on March 8 with >99% probability that Clinton would win Michigan (she lost).  Silver again predicted on May 3 with 90% probability that Clinton would win Indiana (she lost).  But there is another issue besides being wrong, which is how much model flip-flopping is occurring just up to these elections.  

The most proximate example is Silver stating this past Sunday that Cruz had a 65% chance to win Indiana; the next day (Monday, the eve of the election) and with little new data, he “adjusts” that to Trump having a 69% chance to win!  That’s horrible!  And this mistrust of forecasters going beyond Indiana, since we’ll show below that in 14 of 63 state elections so far, likely voters and have had this sort of shoddy slip-flopping to contend with.  So an important question we all must have this year is given the more narrow polling margins for the general election, the degree to which these forecasters have not been able to make sense of their own models, and the large amount of flip-flopping anyway, how will we ever believe anyone’s single forecast representation of who will win in November?  Whenever a forecaster repeatedly (here, here) and guardedly blames “special circumstances” for her or his deteriorating performance, that is further sign that trouble is brewing up and is being masqueraded as everything is awesome.

First we should note that Clinton’s recent loss in Indiana is another horrifying loss of those states where a pollster suggested at least 90% accuracy (see our prequel article titled: The mercurial pollster results and which Columbia statistician Andrew Gelman thought was “cogent”).  The probability of these many errors being simply due to “bad luck” is down to 3%, so highly unlikely. 

Now let’s look at the 63 states where Silver has provided a time series of his forecasted winner.  We documented each of these states in the map below, separating out those which were/are Democratic races from those that are Republican races.  We show the Republican states, in green on the right map below.  For 7 of 32 states, Silver completely flipped his opinion on which Republican would win and who would lose that state’s primary.  We instead color those red.  Only in Missouri did we color the state yellow, for a partial flip-flop.  Since the initial probability Silver gave to his predicted winner was beyond cut in half (from 14% advantage, to 6%).  For Republicans, Silver flip-flops in nearly 1 of 4 states!  Any general election poll without flip-flopping could have similar odds for the weaker of the two candidates, and now we cut this forecaster’s reliability in half by flip-flopping.  That’s the key to understanding the difference between “the signal and the noise“.

For Democrats, things are about the same too, in the 31 states so far, suggesting that this year’s difficulties are not a Trump-only phenomenon.  In 4 states (red) we see that Silver completely flip-flopped, and in 3 states (yellow) he at least partially flip-flopped.  For Democrats, Silver flip-flopped in nearly 1 of 5 states.  Different states too versus those on the Republican party, further suggesting there are serious problems at the core of how Silver and other forecasters are modeling and misleading the public as to their accuracy.

Something else to consider is whether these flip-flops are an excusable pattern where the country shifts its psyche fundamentally, over the course of the campaign season so far.  So we plot the states and how they have flip-flopped (0% for none, and 100% for full) throughout each day of the campaign season.  We show through larger data markers where we have more state forecasts behind them (such as recently near March’s Super Tuesday).  We see the erratic level of flip-flopping (standard deviation of nearly 20%), through the uptick in the past month (including Indiana).

 

And for Democrats this flip-flopping timeline is only slightly better, but still significantly weak.  Note that the smoothed blue line gyrates, from a high at around the start of 2016, to more erratic in the past couple months.  Both of these charts suggest that anyone confidently knowing how the size up the Republicans and Democrats -6 months hence on Election Day- is simply being disingenuous about their own models.  You would fare better by taking a dice, painting some faces red (for Republican) and others blue (for Democrat); then rolling the dice!

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A comment I made yesterday yielded a response from a reader……..

That got me thinking…………..and I’m inclined to agree! Just imagine the song list:

Act One
My Girl Courtney
It’s Good to See You (It’s Good to Be Seen)
The Stopped-Out Blues
Marry Me, Melissa Lee
Long of Love
The Broken Clock Song (Ensemble)

Act Two
Gently, Quietly, Pleasantly
Flip Flop Fever
The King of Commodities
Marry Me, Melissa Lee (reprise)
CNBC For You, For Me
I Love You (In Yen Terms)
Not in My Lifetime

via http://ift.tt/27181ar Tim Knight from Slope of Hope

When Jim Chanos said earlier this week that days ago that sub-Saharan Africa is facing a severe cash shortage (mostly as a result of their collapsing oil export revenue) he probably did not have the economic basket case of Zimbabwe in mind, and yet this is the country which, after years of monetary and economic collapse “problems”, including the occasional bout of hyperinflation, finds itself in the most dire situation.

As News24 reports, just this past week, Zimbabweans formed long queues outside banks on Thursday as a cash shortage prompted the government to announce plans to print a local version of the US dollar and limit withdrawals.

Indeed, it appears that Zimbabwe is about to unveil yet another monetary experiment in which it will print its own version of the US dollar, as an ailing economy fuels a severe cash shortage.

John Mangudya, Zimbabwe’s central bank governor, said Thursday the so-called bond notes will be backed by $200 million in support from the Africa Export-Import Bank, according to the Herald, a local government-owned newspaper. He also announced restrictions on cash and ATM withdrawals, as well as limits on how much cash people can take outside the country.

In its statement, the central bank explained the cash shortage as follows:

The shortage of USD cash in the country as evidenced by queues at some banks and automated teller machines (ATMs) is attributable to a number of intertwined factors that include:

• The dysfunctional multi-currency system as a result of the strong USD. In the case of Zimbabwe, the USD has become to be more of a commodity, a safe haven currency or asset than a medium of exchange.
• Low levels of use of plastic money and the real time gross settlement (RTGS) platforms. Zimbabwe is predominantly a cash economy.
• Low levels of local production to meet consumer demand, leading to higher demand for foreign exchange to import consumer goods.
• Low consumer and business confidence as reflected by high appetite by both consumers and business to keep cash outside the banking system.
• Inefficient distribution and utilization of scarce foreign exchange resources.

“It is not an overnight process,” Mangudya told the Herald when asked what date the bond notes will be issued. “We are still working on a design which will be sent for printing outside the country. The notes will not be introduced immediately but probably within the next two months.”

We wonder if Zimbabwe will use the same money printer as Venezuela, and if so, whether payment upfront will be demanded.

According to IBT, the specially designed dollar notes will come in denominations of two, five, 10 and 20. They will also have the same value as their U.S. dollar equivalents. The bond notes are an extension of so-called bond coins of one, five, 10 and 25 cents which the central bank introduced in 2014 and are pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar.

Humorously, the central bank governor stressed the introduction of the bond notes does not signal the return of the defunct Zimbabwean dollar, which the country ditched in 2009 amid sustained hyperinflation. Residents have since been using the U.S. dollar as well as several other foreign currencies, including the South African rand and the Chinese yuan. To curb the U.S. dollar shortage, Mangudya also set a $1,000 limit on how much cash can be taken out of the country and encouraged residents to use the rand since South Africa is Zimbabwe’s top trading partner, BBC News reported.

Iornically, lately the rand itself has been having major problems, as the South African currency has suffered from the brunt of a general sell-off in riskier assets amid fears of a global economic slowdown at a time when South Africa’s own economy is also struggling to grow. Ratings agencies have threatened possible downgrades should the South African government show a lack of commitment to cutting its budget deficit. 

The situation has made Zimbabweans – long without their own rapidly devaluing or otherwise currency – reluctant to hold on to rand notes because they are worried the currency won’t maintain its value against the U.S. dollar. As Zimbabwe faces deepening economic woes after drought weakened vital agricultural production and disrupted hydro power generation, cash-strapped residents are lining up outside banks in the capital to get dollars to pay for everything from groceries to school fees.

This week even the IMF chimed in, warning Zimbabwe things will get much worse unless the African nations takes aggressive steps: “Unless the country takes bold reforms, the economic difficulties will continue in [the] medium term,” the International Monetary Fund said in a report Wednesday, after the most recent consultation with Zimbabwean officials. “Given the outlook for the global economy, growth is projected to remain below levels needed to ensure sustainable development and poverty reduction.”

As a result, Zimbabwe is indeed taking “bold reform”, and it is doing precisely what put it on the global map in the first place: it is about to print money, which initially will be backed by the paltry sum of $200 million, and shortly thereafter… it won’t. Which means the countdown to Zimbabwe’s next hyperinflation is on.

Full statement from the often times quite comic RBZ:

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