Topping off a weekend of surreal news is the announcement from the Central Bank of Zimbabwe that the country is now evaluating introducing a gold-backed Zimbabwean dollar, and, in keeping with the Salvador Dali feel to the past 48 hours, that the "days of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency are numbered." Yes. Zimbabwe, the same place that two years ago sported a brand new crisp Z$100 trillion bill. What is just as odd is that this news comes less than a week after Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized US economic policies, saying that the paper currency created by the American government is taking a heavy toll on the global economy. While Zimbabwe, which now transacts almost exclusively in foreign currencies such as the USD and the South African Rand, is actively considering ways to return its own currency into circulation, the man who has up to now served as an inspiration and a role model to Ben Bernanke, Gideon Gono, said the country should consider adopting a gold-backed currency. “There is a need for us to begin thinking seriously and urgently about introducing a Gold-backed Zimbabwe currency which will not only stable but internationally acceptable,” he said in an interview with state media... That giant ripping noise you hear is the Chairsatan tearing down each and every 20x10 poster of Gideon Gono, lining the hallways of the Princeton Economics department.
From News Zimbabwe:
THE central bank says the country must consider adopting a gold-backed Zimbabwean dollar warning that the US greenback’s days as the world’s reserve currency are numbered.
Government ditched the Zimbabwe dollar in 2009 after it had been rendered worthless by record inflation levels and adopted multiple foreign currencies with the US dollar, the South African Rand and the Botswana being the most widely used.
“We need to re-think our gold-mining strategy, our gold-liberalisation and marketing strategies as a country. The world needs to and will most certainly move to a gold standard and Zimbabwe must lead the way.”
Gono said the inflationary effects of United States’ deficit financing of its budget was likely to impact other countries to leading to a resistance of the green back as a base currency.
We wonder what took Zimbabwe, a country rich in natural resources, so long to figure out that it was nothing but a puppet in the hands of western monetary interests:
“The events of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis demand a new approach to self reliance and a stable mineral-backed currency and to me, Gold has proven over the years that it is a stable and most desired precious metal,” Gono said.
“Zimbabwe is sitting on trillions worth of gold-reserves and it is time we start thinking outside the box, for our survival and prosperity.”
Curiously, the same can be said for Russia, and, soon enough, after it will have bought every last resource and global extraction company, China.
By now it is far too clear that it is an "Onion" world out there. Will it be all that surprising if Zimbabwe is the first country, following its brief and painful detour into hyperinflation, to introduce a gold-backed currency?
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