And then there's Zimbabwe - Part 63

This must be "inflation week" because inflation all around the world is once again in the news. It seems that China's got more of it than they'd care for - up 6.5 percent from year-ago levels driven by an 18 percent surge in food prices.

A more western-style calculation of rising prices resulted in a 2.1 percent increase in the U.K. - this exceeded the government's target of "two percent", however, the good news was that "core inflation" held steady at just 1.5 percent.

For British citizens interested in what rising prices might be in the real world, they have a handy inflation calculator(.xls) at the Telegraph Newspaper website that you might want to give a try - after plugging in my own numbers, it spit out 5 percent. For seniors, it would probably be closer to 10 percent.

In the U.S., there is renewed talk of "inflation-proof, digital gold" as the dollar continues to lose value, the cost of living continues to rise, yet government reported inflation never seems to go up too much. New data for both consumer prices and producer prices in the U.S. will be released later this week and the "core rate" is expected to remain just below "two percent".

Someday, either the rest of the world will figure out how to calculate their inflation rate so it comes out to "two percent" (see Argentina) or the citizens in the West will figure out that prices are rising much faster than their government tells them. It will be fun to watch.

And then there's Zimbabwe.

Whenever any central banker from the West or the East begins to wonder how they're doing in fighting the scourge of inflation (ironically, something that they create by printing so much damn money), they can always look at what is happening in Zimbabwe and be assured that, on a relative basis, they are doing just fine.

Queuing for crumbs in a Zimbabwe bread line

In Zimbabwe, where hyperinflation has reached 7,900% and people have used up their entire savings just buying food, life has been reduced to this: the queue. Go to any Zimbabwean town these days and you'll find lines everywhere, like an invasion of giant pythons slithering into every supermarket door.

Kaodza, a hustler in a country where the flour has all but run out and bread has become a luxury, gives a quick tutorial on how to get ahead in a queue. You don't just line up and wait to buy. There is an unspoken etiquette, with subtle rules. Only those in a police or army uniform get to ignore the queue entirely.

For people such as Kaodza, queuing is no mere dull necessity; it's become a business. They are master queue tacticians, managing to be in line in three or four places. They reserve themselves a place at the top of the queue, scamper to the end and reserve themselves a place there by making a deal with the last person to let them back into line later. They wait for the queue to build up a little more and scurry to grab another place at the end.

According to local etiquette, you can leave the line, but never for long. To rejoin, you need the recognition of the person you made an agreement with. But if you neglect to pay the guard in charge of the queue, you still won't be able to creep back to your place, Kaodza says.
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President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since its independence from Britain in 1980, blames the West for the catastrophe. But each measure adopted by the ruling ZANU-PF party seems to have made things worse.

By printing money, it triggered hyperinflation. Its remedy was to set prices in Operation Dzikisa Mutengo (Operation Reduce Prices) in late June, which emptied the supermarket shelves of basic goods and ran some small businesses into the ground.

It would seem that with inflation at almost 8,000 percent, you have nowhere to go but down, but, then again, why stop at 8,000?