In Which I Implicitly Endorse The Death Of A Sovereign

If it weren't so tragic, the unimaginable suffering of Zimbabwe's citizens under the rule of the peer-less despot Robert Mugabe would serve as the perfect natural experiment for a research paper on any one of a number of macroeconomic policy topics.  It's almost as if he didn't get the memo about politicians actually leading their country forward.  He is literally pursuing every single growth-killing policy that economists have thought of in the history of the discipline.  Simultaneously.  And, as mentioned previously, the results are blindingly and tragically obvious.  The effect of price controls on food, water and electricity?  Check.  Shortages and hoarding.  The effect of printing more money for financing municipal projects?  Check.  Hyperinflation.  Seizing and redistributing land based on ethnicity and not on productivity or price?  Check.  Food shortages and starvation.  New words for 'terrible' need to be invented to describe just how terrible of a ruler this man is.  The only saving grace for Zimbabwe is that he's currently 82 years old and will soon be nothing more than a rotting carcass.  That is, if his disastrous policies don't force the people he claims to serve to eat him first.