In the past anyone with a million ringgit is consider a very rich person, hence the word millionaire. However with inflation driving in and a double storrey house in Klang Valley already cost more than half a million, millionaire is a commoner in urban area. To be considers really rich one need to have a fortune of billion, hence the name, billionaire.
After watching BBC Top Gear season 12 special edition where Jeremy, Hammond and James are each given 15 million dong which fits in a shoe box, to purchase a vehicle and race from South Vietnam to North Vietnam in 8 days where the Americans have failed to do in 10 years, only to discover that sum of money only worth 1000 US dollar and they have to settle with motor bikes, raise a question to me, where on earth has the least value currency? In other words, in which country you can become billionaire overnight, in their currency of course.
To find the answer I look no further by asking the know-all-thing, wikipedia. I quickly found the answer and it really scares me off. Not because of how “big” the money is, but the fact is there’s no modern handheld calculator to date that can carry out calculations for so many digits. All I can think of is Zimbawee has some of the best mathematicians in the world that rivals computer! In fact the whole population has to count multi-trillions dollar everyday! If you think US trillion dollars stimulus package is a lot of money wait till you hear this.
According to wiki, the last recorded rate was on 2 Feb 2009 and one US dollar is equals to 12,336,416,667 Third Zimbabwean dollar (ZWR) which is the official bank rate. In the black market you can get as high as 300,000,000,000,000. Yeah, every Zimbawees is trying to get rid of ZWR as soon as possible. I am sorry, it’s not that my maths is bad, but I certainly never dealt with such a large sums of money in my life. Forgive me if I pronounce it wrongly. Is that 3 trillions dollar? I am a trillionaire!
Unfortunately Zimbabwe’s currency, the Zimbabwean dollar, is suspended for at least one year effective from 12 April 2009. That means you can’t exchange ZWR for until April 2010.
Next on the list is Somaliland, neighbour to the pirates nation Somalia and not widely recognised as an independent sovereign state. Since it’s not a recognize country we can leave that out.
Thus in principle, as on end of 2009, the easiest and fastest way to become a billionaire is still Vietnam. No wonder BBC Top Gear went there.
To read more please goto http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_valued_currency_unit