Y2K 2.0: Banking software is not ready to handle Zimbabwe's inflation.

I wonder if a lot of relational database schemata intended to store monetary amounts can't handle amounts in the quadrillions.

PostgreSQL can only go up to 92233720368547758.07 (http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/datatype-money.htm...) -- 17 digits. Zimbabwe is pushing its limits.

SQL Server 2000's money datatype limit is a few orders of magnitude smaller (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa933242(SQL.80).aspx), and so a 15 digit number can't be stored in it AFAIK.

On the bright side...

Brazil also suffered from hyperinflation during the late 80s and early 90s, requiring programmers to deal with the craziest policies you (or the IMF) can imagine -- From nationwide account freezes to exchanging entire currencies overnight. As a result, today Brazil has one of the most advanced banking systems in the world, even compared to systems in the US and Europe, and extremely competent senior programmers and innovators in the industry.

<sarcasm> Hello, my name is Robert Mugabe. I am the Leader of Zimbabwe. My treasury has excess funds that we cannot currently use in Zimbabwe due to political circumstances. I would like to see this money put to good use and you seem like a good person. If you send me $50,000 in good faith, I will mail you 100 billion dollars within a month. </sarcasm>

Hey, it's a scam that's honest! Maybe ;-)

My first thought reading this, of course, was "they should have written the ATM controllers in Lisp".

They just dropped 10 zeros to fix the bug: http://redwoodage.com/content/view/143539/49

Wow, call me crazy, but I'm buying one of those on eBay immediately.

"Inflation" isn't zimbabwe's problem. Zimbabwe's problem is political tyranny. It's a nation hell bent on self genocide.

We need to stop worrying about inflation there and "just let it go". Build a fence around the whole country and don't let anyone in or out until nothing moves inside but the wild animals.