Hyper Inflation

Inflation in Zimbabwe is rising so rapidly that a new means of measuring it has had to be invented.

Steve Hanke, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, and an expert in exchange rates and inflation, has developed the Hanke Hyperinflation Index for Zimbabwe (HHIZ).

Given the non-existence of government statistics for the money supply and the unreliability of its inflation statistics, it uses market-based price data instead to calculate the figure. As of this week, the HHIZ showed inflation in Zimbabwe was 2 trillion per cent a year.

Two trillion percent. I can't write that as a number because I'm not sure how many zeros to use. Because I read this in The Telegraph I'm assuming they are using the non-American definition of trillion which has 18 zeros after the figure and is known in the US as a quintillion. A US trillion is known in the rest of the world as a billion.

The highest inflation in the world, ever, was post-war Hungary, where it reached 4.19 quintillion per cent.

In August last year the Zimbabwe government knocked 10 zeros off its currency.