Even Zimbabwe Has More Cash Reserves than US

Making the rounds in the news today is the recent report that Zimbabwe is down to the felt in their coffers, having only 217 bucks left after paying their bills this month. Zimbabwe experienced astronomical runaway inflation after Robert Mugabe stole the land from whites and plunged their economy into the shitter. And while journalists point and laugh at the dire straits in Zimbabwe, they forget that at least that nation has a surplus. Our country paid its bills and ran up a 16 Trillion dollar debt.

From TheAtlantic here:

There are cash-strapped governments and there are broke governments. And then there’s Zimbabwe, which, after paying last week’s government salaries, has just $217 left in the bank. No, we didn’t forget any zeroes to the end of that figure. Zimbabwe, the country that’s home to some of the world’s largest plutonium and diamond reserves, literally has the same financial standing as a 14-year-old girl after a really good birthday party. The country’s finance minister admitted as much in a press conference on Tuesday. “Last week when we paid civil servants there was $217 [left] in government coffers,” Tendai Biti told reporters. “The government finances are in paralysis state at the present moment. We are failing to meet our targets.”

So it seems. However, Zimbabwe is hardly a stranger to financial hyperbole. The economy started to come apart at the seams in 2000, when President Robert Mugabe seized the land of over 4,000 white-owned farmers, effectively dismantling the country’s agriculture industry. Over the course of the next decade, the country spiraled into an extended period of hyperinflation, the likes of which the world almost never sees. It peaked in August 2008, when inflation reached 11,200,000 percent and economists around the world started to say that the country’s situation was hopeless. Prices were doubling by the day, and the government had to print Z$100 billion notes. The following year, they went ahead and printed Z$100 trillion notes, just before deciding to chop 12 zeroes off of the currency. A new coalition government formed that year and started on the long process of financial recovery, a process that is clearly going to take a little longer.

Zimbabwe has a balanced budget. The United States does not.