Mr. Inflation

Forget Keynes. Forget Friedman. Here's Gideon Gono – the man of the hour...

FORGET KEYNES, forget Friedman, writes Bill Bonner in his Daily Reckoning.

The economist that everyone should be paying attention to is Gono...Gideon Gono.

Inflation is coming back in style. And Gideon Gono is its star. While other central bankers flounder, he's proven that you can have inflation...and have it more abundantly than you ever imagined...to counter a credit crunch.

Gono, if you haven't heard of him, is Robert Mugabe's right hand man. And Robert Mugabe is the number one man in Zimbabwe, an African country with a real 'riches to rags' story. It was one of the wealthiest and safest countries in Africa in the 1970s. But the meddlers and world-improvers couldn't leave well enough alone. They helped put Mugabe in power. Since then, the place has gone to hell.

Gideon Gono, 47 years old, lives in a 47-bedroom mansion in Harare. He says he doesn't drink, only sleeps 4 hours a night, and runs regularly. He is known as "Mr. Inflation" for his Olympian efforts to increase the country's money supply.

Gono does inflation the old fashioned way – by printing pieces of paper will lots of zeros on them. Newsweek magazine seems to have found him in a talkative mood:

Asked what he thought of the worldwide credit crash, he replied:

"I sit back and see the world today crying over the recent credit crunch, becoming hysterical about something which has not even lasted for a year, and I have been living with it for 10 years.

"My country has had to go for the past decade without credit...Out of the necessity to exist, to ensure my people survive, I had to start printing money.

"I found myself doing extraordinary things that aren't in the textbooks. Then the IMF asked the US to please print money. I began to see the whole world now in a mode of practicing what they have been saying I should not."