Zimbabwe issues 100 trillion dollar note
On January 16, 2009, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe issued a Z$100,000,000,000,000 note — one hundred trillion Zimbabwe dollars. It was the largest denomination note of the 21st century. Zimbabwe's inflation rate at its peak in November 2008 was estimated at 79.6 billion percent per month — prices doubling every 24 hours. The Zimbabwe dollar was abandoned entirely in April 2009 in favor of a multi-currency regime using the U.S. dollar, South African rand, and other regional currencies. Zimbabwe tried to reintroduce a local currency in 2019 (RTGS dollar), which itself hyperinflated by 2022.
Zimbabwe's hyperinflation was caused by a specific political decision: the Mugabe government's land-reform program destroyed commercial agriculture and export earnings, and the central bank responded by printing money to cover the fiscal hole. The subsequent collapse of dollarization in 2019-2022 shows how difficult it is to re-establish a local currency after a severe loss of confidence.
06 · Modern Fiat Failures
With gold constraints gone entirely, currency debasement became a recurring feature of emerging-market economics. Argentina replaced its currency five times between 1970 and 1992, each time lopping off zeros and re-starting. Brazil did similar serial redenominations. Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe, and the post-Soviet states produced spectacular hyperinflations. Meanwhile, major central banks learned to hide their monetary expansion in increasingly technical mechanisms — money-supply measures were redefined, reporting requirements were relaxed, and the Federal Reserve stopped publishing M3 entirely in 2006.
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