The Top 40

Does anyone here know what a quadrillion is? It's one thousand trillion. I had to look it up.

I just got off the phone with Bobbie Mugobbie and all I could say was, "Why, Bobbie, why?"

He told me that he simply ran out of room on the dollar bills to print all those zeros. I said back to him, "Bobbie, wake up and smell the coffee. Haven't you heard of exponents?"

He laughed and said, "Of course I have. Remember all those white farmers? They used to be my opponents and now they is my 'exponents'. Ha, ha, ha."

All I could do is sigh.

Sure, laugh now. We're all going to be Weimar Republic states soon unless something amazing happens.

I collect old U.S. currency, and I picked up a couple of these notes at a show a few years ago. They used to cost about $4 – $5, but then they got popular. Now they're $20 – $30 on ebay.

An amazing thing about this note is that it's a hundred, followed by 12 zeroes: $100,000,000,000,000.

Isn't that amazing? But not as amazing as the fact that before it was issued, Zimbabwe had already knocked off 12 zeroes!

So the real number is:

$100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

I thought the next one would have exponents, but they threw in the towel on that series.

I have an RBZ 50,000,000 dollar bank note.

Of course, it expired June 20, 2008. The amazing part is the issue date was only April 2, 2008.

Oh, I long for the days of barter. A wheelbarrow with a goose and a sack of grain and trade for salt and flour.
Coinage was rare, some gold if the local markets agreed.
The next barter system we get into, and we will get to it, will see ammunition as coin of the realm.