What would you buy with a 100-trillion dollar bill?
That bill has 14 zeros. Most countries don’t even have such a crazy unit of paper money. But Zimbabwe did. Zimbabwe printed the bills when the country had very little money. As the country printed more and more bills, the bills became more and more worthless. So a person could have hundreds of trillions of dollars and really have no money at all!
Zimbabwe stopped using the bills in 2009. Then most people started using a bill that has actual value: the American dollar. But now Zimbabwe is so poor that people are running out of American dollars too.
What can Zimbabweans do? Some have started selling the old, funny bills. They have become a collector’s item for tourists. But the notes are not worth $100 trillion. Right now people buy them for just $25.
