Our Economic "Crisis"

When I lived in Romania in the mid 1990's, I constantly had to convert American dollars to Romanian lei. I often had to go out to the street corners and find a "bisnitar" (pronounced beeshneetsar--they gave the term "money changers" in the Bible new meaning) to convert my currency.

Inflation was rampant after the fall of Communism, and many retirees saw their comfortable retirement savings deflate to the cost of a hamburger and fries in just a couple of years. My wife and I had to carry sacks full of money to the telephone company to pay our bills. You never kept cash around for more than a day because it could lose 25% of its value overnight.

Recently, in Zimbabwe, the bill pictured above would give you enough buying power to purchase these:

(Thanks to a WallStreak contributor Market Monk who posted a link about Zimbabwe here.)

Things are tough here in America, and the stock market sucks right now. But we still have a ways to go before we should be running in the streets worried that the world is over.