March 20, 2007
More from Our Man in Harare
I got some more data on the Zimbabwean dollar going back to 1986 when it was around 1.70. This monthly chart puts things in a little better perspective than the one I posted earlier. You can see the long terrible slide through the 1990’s … scary stuff. Anyway it looks like things were falling apart long before Mugabe started his disastrous land seizure campaign. Can someone remind me when Mugabe came to power?
And here’s the Zimbabwe Industrial Stock Index … I only have data from the beginning of 2005.
Cat: | Time: 7:36 pm (utc+8)
March 20th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Bob Mugabe took the helm in ‘87 I believe. He’s
got to pushing 80.
March 20th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Can someone remind me when Mugabe came to power?
1980
March 20th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Hugo: Thx.
Bob: I googled it and Hugo’s right. Also found this which looks interesting: How Mugabe came to power … now I need to find ZBW data that goes back to 1980. :-( Mugabe was born February 21, 1924.
March 20th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
I think the inflation you see in the 90s is something pretty endemic to Africa, not a unique Zimbabwe/Mugabe thing. You’d have to compare the Zim dollar to the Naira (Nigeria), CFA (various French West African countries, and the Kenyan shilling to see when it started to depart from the overall trend.
March 21st, 2007 at 7:55 am
when you say “when did mugabe take power” at first i think “jeesh, the guy can’t just look it it up on wikipedia” and then i realize, actually, no, you probably can’t. the great (fire)wall and all.
anyway, here’s what it says in the opening 2 paragraphs:
Robert Gabriel Mugabe (born 21 February 1924) is a Zimbabwean politician and the current President of Zimbabwe. He has been the head of government in Zimbabwe since 1980, first as Prime Minister and later as first executive President. Throughout his career, Mugabe has espoused pan-Africanism and African interdependence and unity.
In recent years, Mugabe has attracted international criticism for corruption, mishandling of land reforms, economic mismanagement, and a deteriorating human rights situation in Zimbabwe. According to most outside observers his policies have led to economic collapse and massive starvation over the course of the last ten years.
March 21st, 2007 at 8:00 am
jp: good idea.
Brad: Right, Wikipedia is blocked in China thus saving me hours of surfing every day.
March 21st, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Maoxian, theres an article on politics in Zimbabwe in this weeks Economist, it states inflation at over 1700% and unemployment of at least 80%. Theres also an article on Democracy in China and one on the cultural revolution in Taiwan ripped out from every edition here in China, hehe.
Heres a present for you http://wapedia.mobi/en/
Nik
March 21st, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Nik: Yes, that Economist article was linked to in the comments of the previous post. What is this link you’ve left? It doesn’t do anything for me… en?
March 21st, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Maoxian, you need to use firefox, not IE to open the link. Its the mobile/pda version of wikipedia. You can access it within China.
This is the article I was referring to, there seems to be weekly articles on Zimbabwe lately.
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8855967
March 21st, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Nik: Ah yes, very nice, instantly delicious’d it. ;-) And that is a different article on Zimbabwe, thanks.
March 21st, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Maoxian, Thanx. 1987 was when Bob became the first
president of Zimbabwe. I must have been in the
neighborhood at the time to know this–just can’t
remember why.
BoB
April 23rd, 2007 at 10:12 pm
[…] Looking at a chart of the Istanbul Stock Exchange National 100 Index today reminded me of my old Mugabe posts. […]