Making Our Financial Crisis Look Bush League (no pun intended)

In our preoccupation with the U.S. financial crisis - now democratically spreading to Asia and Europe - we may have forgotten about the goings-on in Zimbabwe.

A bit over a year ago, I reported that their inflation rate was set to hit 100,000% for the year. Now it looks like the economists got it wrong. In fact, the annual inflation rate has now hit 11,268,758.90%. That's the number reported by the governmental Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Check out their website, which will inform you as to the vision and mission of this feckless institution:

Our Vision
To become the financial cornerstone around which Zimbabwe's economic fortunes and developmental aspirations are anchored.

Our Mission
The pursuit of the Bank's vision will express itself through leadership in the formulation, implementation and monitoring of policies and action plans for fighting inflation, stabilisation of the internal and external value of Zimbabwe's currency ...

A few other tidbits from their website:

• Inflation in the last month has been 839.80%
• The overnight interest rate is 8500.00%
• "The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has, as its primary goal, the maintenance of the internal and external value of the Zimbabwean currency. In this regard, the Bank is responsible for the formulation and implementation of monetary policy, directed at ensuring low and stable inflation levels and maintains a stable banking system through its supervisory and lender of last resort functions."

I would have explored their website further, but the pages load so slowly that the price of bread doubled three times while I was waiting.

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The people of Zimbabwe are waiting, too. Over 5 million face starvation by the end of the year. My guess is that the great statesman, the near-divine President Mugabe, has food to eat that his people know not of.

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Meanwhile, the world does nothing. Why intervene? It's just a bunch of black people who have nothing to offer us.

News You May Have Missed: Stimulus = Stimulation

Yesterday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution tells us where a lot of those $600 economic stimulus checks have been going. And you thought it was for gas or paying down debt. Think again:

Stimulus checks boost adult Web sites
By Tammy Joyner, Cox News Service
Tuesday, July 08, 2008

ATLANTA — Seems Uncle Sam's economic stimulus checks are boosting an unlikely part of the economy.

Adult entertainment Web sites began seeing a spike in business shortly after the first wave of checks went out in mid-May, according to Adult Internet Market Research Co., a New York firm that tracks the adult online world.

The checks paid up to $600 to individuals and $1,200 to married couples.

The online spike is unusual since the warmer months — beginning in May — tend to be slow for the adult online entertainment industry, said Kirk Mishkin, director of the market research firm.

The market research firm was alerted to the increase by one of its for-pay Web sites.

"Thirty-two percent of respondents referenced the recent stimulus package as part of their decision to either become a new member or renew an existing membership," said Jillian Fox, a spokeswoman for LSGModels, the company that tipped off the research firm.

The market research firm polled the rest of its 800 pay site members and 4,000 affiliates sites, and found similar results after compiling data over seven weeks.

Some 20 percent to 30 percent of the people who responded said the stimulus checks were an incentive to go onto the sites, Mishkin said.

The surveys didn't ask how much of the stimulus checks went to online visits, Mishkin said, but purchases tend to be around $50 for a monthly membership.

"People know how much they need to pay for rent, buy gas and take their kids to school," he said. "The stimulus check was a way for some people to entertain themselves."

The biggest surprise from this article? Actually, two: first, that the "adult online entertainment industry" is seasonal; and second, that this reporter could write an entire article about pornography without once using the word.