4.530% de inflación y ninguna flor

Nada que un buen control de precios no pueda arreglar.

Zimbabwe sigue su camino a la gloria, al mejor estilo Argentina 1989. Leo la descripción de lo que está pasando esa pobre gente y parece calcado de la Argentina de esa época:

Zimbabwe's dollar plummeted 67 percent on the black market this week, forcing some retailers and gasoline stations in the capital, Harare, to stop trading.

The currency, officially pegged at 250 against the U.S. dollar, sold for as much as 300,000 a dollar on the streets, where most Zimbabweans exchange their foreign currency, money traders said. It has depreciated from 100,000 earlier this week and from 3,000 to the dollar on Jan. 20.

"Inflation and the exchange rate are running away and out of control," John Robertson, an independent economist, said in an interview today from Harare. "We're on a slippery slope that must be coming to an end now."

Inflation in Zimbabwe, the world's fastest-shrinking economy, accelerated to 4,530 percent in May, according to NMBZ Holdings Ltd., a Zimbabwean bank. The nation's statistics agency hasn't released figures for May yet.

The southern African nation is in its eighth successive year of recession after President Robert Mugabe began seizing white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to black subsistence farmers denied land during white rule. That slashed export earnings, sparking shortages of everything from motor fuel to the country's staple food, corn meal.