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Thursday, January 30, 2014

Bundesbank calls for capital levy to avert government bankruptcies


(Reuters) - Germany's Bundesbank said on Monday that countries about to go bankrupt should draw on the private wealth of their citizens through a one-off capital levy before asking other states for help.
The Bundesbank's tough stance comes after years of euro zone crisis that saw five government bailouts. There have also bond market interventions by the European Central Bank in, for example, Italy where households' average net wealth is higher than inGermany.
"(A capital levy) corresponds to the principle of national responsibility, according to which tax payers are responsible for their government's obligations before solidarity of other states is required," the Bundesbank said in its monthly report.
It warned that such a levy carried significant risks and its implementation would not be easy, adding it should only be considered in absolute exceptional cases, for example to avert a looming sovereign insolvency.
The International Monetary Fund discussed the option in a report in October and said that reducing debt ratios to end-2007 levels for a sample of 15 euro area countries, a tax rate of about 10 percent on households with positive net wealth would be required.
The German Institute for Economic Research calculated in 2012 that in Germany a 10-percent levy on a tax base derived from a personal allowance of 250,000 euros would add up to around 230 billion euros. It did not give a figure for crisis countries due to lack of sufficient data.
Greece has been granted bailout funds of 240 billion euros from the euro area, its national central banks and IMF to protect it from a chaotic default and possible exit from the euro zone. Not all funds have been paid out yet.
In Germany, however, the Bundesbank said it would not support an implementation of a recurrent wealth tax, saying it would harm growth.
Recent reforms and adjustments in the euro zone's struggling
countries - IrelandGreece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus and Portugal - have improved conditions for sustainable growth, the Bundesbank said, but remained concerned about high debt levels.
It was still a key challenge to drive down public as well as private debt and the ECB's upcoming bank health checks could help to address current problems in the banking sector.
A successful test could also help to wean banks in the euro zone periphery countries off ECB funding, the Bundesbank said.
"It is not the purpose of European monetary policy to ensure solvency of national banking systems or governments and it cannot replace necessary economic adjustments or bank balance sheet clean ups," the Bundesbank said.
(Reporting by Eva Taylor Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

The Big Reset


This is part two of a Q&A with Willem Middelkoop about his new book The Big ResetIn his book a chapter on the ‘War on Gold’ takes a prominent position. Willem has been writing about the manipulation of the gold pricesince 2002 based on information collected by GATA since the late 1990’s. So part two of our interview will focus on this topic.

The War On Gold


Why does the US fight gold?


The US wants its dollar system to prevail for as long as possible. It therefore has every interest in preventing a ‘rush out of dollars into gold’. By selling (paper) gold, bankers have been trying in the last few decades to keep the price of gold under control. This war on gold has been going on for almost one hundred years, but it gained traction in the 1960's with the forming of the London Gold Pool. Just like the London Gold Pool failed in 1969, the current manipulation scheme of gold (and silver prices) cannot be maintained for much longer.


What is the essence of the war on gold?


The survival of our current financial system depends on people preferring fiat money over gold. After the dollar was taken of the gold standard in 1971, bankers have tried to demonetize gold. One of the arguments they use to deter investors from buying gold and silver is that these metals do not deliver a direct return such as interest or dividends. But interest and dividend are payments to compensate for counterparty risk – the risk that your counterparty is unable to live up to its obligations. Gold doesn’t carry that risk. The war on gold is, in essence, an endeavor to support the dollar. But this is certainly not the only reason. According to a number of studies, the level of the gold price and the general public’s expectations of inflation are highly correlated. Central bankers work hard to influence inflation expectations. A 1988 study by Summers and Barsky confirmed that the price of gold and interest rates are highly correlated, as well with a lower gold price leading to lower interest rates.

Nixon kissinger


When did the war on gold start?


The first evidence of US meddling in the gold market can be found as early as 1925 when the Fed falsified information regarding the Bank of England’s possession of gold in order to influence interest rate levels. However, the war on gold only really took off in the 1960's when trust in the dollar started to fray. Geopolitical conflicts such as the building of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the escalation of violence in Vietnam led to increasing military spending by the US, which in turn resulted in growing US budget deficits. A memorandum from 1961 entitled ‘US Foreign Exchange Operations: Needs and Methods’ described a detailed plan to manipulate the currency and gold markets via structural interventions in order to support the dollar and maintain the gold price at $ 35 per ounce. It was vital for the US to ‘manage’ the gold market; otherwise countries could exchange their surplus dollars for gold and then sell these ounces on the free gold market for a higher price.


How was the gold price managed in the 1960’s?


During meetings of the central bank presidents at the BIS in 1961, it was agreed that a pool of $ 270 million in gold would be made available by the eight participating (western) countries. This so-called ‘London Gold Pool’ was focused on preventing the gold price from rising above $ 35 per ounce by selling official gold holdings from the central banks gold vaults. The idea was that if investors attempted to flee to the safe haven of gold, the London Gold Pool would dump gold onto the market in order to keep the gold price from rising. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, for instance, at least $ 60 million in gold was sold between 22 and 24 October. The IMF provided extra gold to be sold on the market when needed. In 2010, a number of previously secret US telex reports from 1968 were made public by Wikileaks. These messages describe what had to be done in order to keep the gold price under control. The aim was to convince investors that it was completely pointless to speculate on a rise in the price of gold. One of the reports mentions a propaganda campaign to convince the public that the central banks would remain ‘the masters of gold’. Despite these efforts, in March 1968, the London Gold Pool was disbanded because France would no longer cooperate. The London gold market remained closed for two weeks. In other gold markets around the world, gold immediately rose 25% in value. This can happen again when the COMEX will default.


More evidence about this manipulation?


From the transcript of a March 1978 Fed-meeting, we know that the manipulation of the gold price was a point of discussion at that time. During the meeting Fed Chairman Miller pointed out that it was not even necessary to sell gold in order to bring the price down. According to him, it was enough to bring out a statement that the Fed was intending to sell gold.
Because the US Treasury is not legally allowed to sell its gold reserves, the Fed decided in 1995 to examine whether it was possible to set up a special construction whereby so-called ‘gold swaps’ could bring in gold from the gold reserves of Western central banks. In this construction, the gold would be ‘swapped’ with the Fed, which would then be sold by Wall Street banks in order to keep prices down. Because of the ‘swap agreement’, the gold is officially only lent out, so Western central banks could keep it on their balance sheets as ‘gold receivables’. The Fed started to informing foreign central bankers that they expected that the gold price to decline further, and large quantities of central banks’ gold became be available to sell in the open market. Logistically this was an easy operation, since the New York Fed vaults had the largest collection of foreign gold holdings. Since the 1930's, many Western countries had chosen to store their gold safely in the US out of fears of a German or Soviet invasion.


Didn’t the British help as well by unloading gold at the bottom of the market?


Between 1999 and 2002, the UK embarked on an aggressive selling of its gold reserves, when gold prices were at their lowest in 20 years. Prior to starting, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, announced that the UK would be selling more than half of its gold reserves in a series of auctions in order to diversify the assets of the UK’s reserves. The markets’ reaction was one of shock, because sales of gold reserves by governments had until then always taken place without any advance warning to investors. Brown was following the Fed’s strategy of inducing a fall in the gold price via an announcement of possible sales. Brown’s move was therefore not intended to receive the best price for its gold but rather to bring down the price of gold as low as possible. The UK eventually sold almost 400 tons of gold over 17 auctions in just three years, just as the gold market was bottoming out. Gordon Brown’s sale of the UK’s gold reserves probably came about following a request from the US. The US supported Brown ever since.



How do they manipulate gold nowadays?


The transition from open outcry (where traders stand in a trading pit and shout out orders) to electronic trading gave new opportunities to control financial markets. Wall Street veteran lawyer Jim Rickards presented a paper in 2006 in which he explained how ‘derivatives could be used to manipulate underlying physical markets such as oil, copper and gold’. In his bestseller entitled Currency Wars, he explains how the prohibition of derivatives regulation in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (2000) had ‘opened the door to exponentially greater size and variety in these instruments that are now hidden off the balance sheets of the major banks, making them almost impossible to monitor’. These changes made it much easier to manipulate financial markets, especially because prices for metals such as gold and silver are set by trading future contracts on the global markets. Because up to 99% of these transactions are conducted on behalf of speculators who do not aim for physical delivery and are content with paper profits, markets can be manipulated by selling large amounts of contracts in gold, silver or other commodities (on paper). The $200 crash of the gold price April 12 and 15, 2013 is a perfect example of this strategy. The crash after silver reached $50 on May 1, 2011 is another textbook example.


For how long can this paper-gold game continue?


As you have been reporting yourself we can witness several indications pointing towards great stress in the physical gold market. I would be very surprised when the current paper gold game can be continued for another two years. This system might even fall apart in 2014. A default in gold and/or silver futures on the COMEX is a real possibility. It happened to the potato market in 1976 when a potato-futures default happened on the NYMEX. An Idaho potato magnate went short potatoes in huge numbers, leaving a large amount of contracts unsettled at the expiration date, resulting in a large number of defaulted delivery contracts.  So it has happened before. In such a scenario futures contracts holders will be cash settled. So I expect the Comex will have to move to cash settlement rather than gold delivery at a certain point in the not too distant future. After such an event the price of gold will be set in Asian markets, like the Shanghai Gold Exchange. I expect gold to jump $1000 in a short period of time and silver prices could easily double overnight. That’s one of the reasons our Commodity Discovery Fund invests in undervalued precious metal companies with large gold/silver reserves. They all have huge up-side potential in the next few years when this scenario will play out.




In Gold We Trust


Synopsis of The Big Reset: Now five years after the near fatal collapse of world’s financial system we have to conclude central bankers and politicians have merely been buying time by trying to solve a credit crisis by creating even more debt. As a result worldwide central bank’s balance sheets expanded by $10 trillion. With this newly created money central banks have been buying up national bonds so long term interest rates and bond yields have collapsed. But ‘parking’ debt at national banks is no structural solution. The idea we can grow our way back out of this mountain of debt is a little naïve. In a recent working paper by the IMF titled ‘Financial and Sovereign Debt Crises: Some Lessons Learned and Those Forgotten’ the economist Reinhart and Rogoff point to this ‘denial problem’. According to them future economic growth will ‘not be sufficient to cope with the sheer magnitude of public and private debt overhangs. Rogoff and Reinhart conclude the size of the debt problems suggests that debt restructurings will be needed ‘far beyond anything discussed in public to this point.’ The endgame to the global financial crisis is likely to require restructuring of debt on a broad scale.

About the author: Willem Middelkoop (1962) is founder of the Commodity Discovery Fund and a bestselling Dutch author, who has been writing about the world’s financial system since the early 2000s. Between 2001 and 2008 he was a market commentator for RTL Television in the Netherlands and also appeared on CNBC. He predicted the credit crisis in his first bestseller in 2007.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Peloton reacts to assertion that 90 percent of Giro peloton dopes


Danilo Di Luca’s assertion that 90 percent of the riders at the Giro d’Italia dope and that it is impossible to finish in the top ten without recourse to performance-enhancing drugs has been rejected by a number of his former colleagues in the professional peloton.
The interview with Di Luca is due to be broadcast on the satirical Italian current affairs show, Le Iene, on Wednesday evening, but an advance transcript of the interview has already been published by a number of Italian media outlets. Di Luca was handed a life ban by the Italian Olympic Committee in December of last year following the third doping sanction of his career.
Reigning Giro champion Vincenzo Nibali made his debut in the corsa rosa as part of the Liquigas team that had helped Di Luca to overall victory in 2007, and he dismissed his former leader’s comments when questioned by reporters at the Tour de San Luis in Argentina.
“For me, Danilo is at the end of his tether and he doesn’t know what to do anymore to earn a bit of loose change,” Nibali told Gazzetta dello Sport. “I’m sorry to say this because he was a great teammate, but now I can only think that he has become a bit brain-damaged.”
Nibali’s thoughts were echoed by Joaquim Rodriguez, who raced alongside Di Luca at Katusha in 2011. Rodriguez finished 5th in that year’s Giro before taking second place in 2012. “Danilo is talking like this now because we all know how he behaved throughout his career,” Rodriguez said, according to Tuttobici. “But I don’t want to add any more. Di Luca doesn’t deserve to be given the chance to make publicity for himself at our expense.”
Di Luca’s former LPR teammate Damiano Caruso, now at Cannondale, disputed the veracity of the comments, telling Gazzetta dello Sport that he believes that “today 99% of the peloton is clean.”
Luca Scinto was Danilo Di Luca's directeur sportif at Vini Fantini last year. He insists he did not know that Di Luca was taking EPO to prepare for the Giro d'Italia and tried to convince Vini Fantini not sign him. He claims he only agreed to take him in time for the Giro d'Italia to secure funding for the team.
"I don’t want to talk about Di Luca, he's an idiot," Scinto told Cyclingnews bluntly. "I was against hiring him and so was especially angry after what happened. What he and Santambrogio did last year nearly cost the jobs of 38 people on the team. Fortunately thanks to support from Neri Sottoli, we've managed to keep going, rebuild the team and secure an invitation to the Giro d'Italia. I don’t want to trawl back over the past and won't even watch the Di Luca interview on television, it'll just make me angry."
On Twitter, Andrew Talansky (Garmin-Sharp) was quick to react to Di Luca’s comments, writing, “I feel genuine hatred towards Di Luca. He's a worthless lying scumbag making false statements that hurt the sport I love.”
Talansky, who finished 10th at last year’s Tour de France, later wrote that he felt Di Luca’s statements were “delusional,” adding: “I wouldn't be in this sport if it was not possible to succeed at the highest level and do it clean.”
Wegelius
Talansky’s Garmin-Sharp directeur sportif Charly Wegelius was a teammate of Di Luca’s at Liquigas and an important part of his Giro-winning squad of 2007. In his autobiography, Domestique, which was published last year, Wegelius praised Di Luca’s qualities as a team leader, but was careful to highlight that the facts of his career spoke for themselves – namely, his positive tests for EPO in 2009 and 2013, and his suspension for his implication in the Oil for Drugs inquiry in 2007.
“He was a charismatic guy to ride for, but none of that puts into any doubt the mistakes that he made and the plain facts, like that he tested positive three times,” Wegelius told Cyclingnews on Wednesday. “I’m not an apologist for his misdemeanours.”
Like Talansky, Wegelius rejected Di Luca’s claim that 90 percent of the Giro peloton doped and his calls for doping to be legalised. “I don’t think there’s much more to say beyond that I don’t agree at all that that’s accurate. It’s far from accurate I think,” Wegelius said.
“The whole cycling community has taken really big strides towards facing this problem. I think those comments are so far from the truth that it’s just sad that they would be allowed to disrupt or distract from the positive work that’s been done. I don’t think that the comments of a guy like Danilo should be allowed to derail that.”
The Italian Olympic Committee has since summoned Di Luca to Rome on January 30 to discuss his allegations. In spite of the derision that has greeted the interview from within the peloton, Wegelius does not believe that Di Luca should automatically precluded from contributing to a solution to cycling’s ills - providing, of course, that he had a genuine wish to do so. Di Luca, after all, provided information to CONI that saw his 2009 ban reduced to 15 months, only to test positive again four years later.
“A kind of satirical programme in the evening in Italy probably isn’t the best place to solve those problems,” Wegelius said. “I wouldn’t exclude him being part of any kind of solution but it would have to be constructive and honest.”

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Keith Jarrett - Koln Concert

Di Luca: 90 per cent of riders in Giro d'Italia were doping

Italian gives revealing interview Six weeks on from being banned for life from sport, Italian Danilo Di Luca has given a revealing interview, to be aired Wednesday on Italia 1 television. In the interview, according to Gazzetta dello Sport, Di Luca states that 90 per cent of the 200 riders in the Giro d'Italia were doping, and that if 10 per cent are not, "that 10 percent don't care about the Giro d'Italia, they are preparing for other races and therefore not doping."

 "It's impossible to finish in the top 10 in the Giro d'Italia and not dope." The 38-year-old has twice served suspensions for doping: first as the result of the "Oil for Drugs" investigation, for which he received a three-month ban in 2007. Shortly after returning, Di Luca's urine samples at the 2007 Giro d'Italia turned up suspiciously absent of any hormones, leading to suspicions that he was using a substance to break down any traces of drugs in his urine.

 He then tested positive for EPO CERA in 2009, after which he served a reduced 15-month suspension after cooperating with authorities. Upon testing positive for EPO again ahead of the 2013 Giro d'Italia, he was sacked by Vini Fantini, and then in December given a lifetime expulsion from the sport for his offences.

 Not surprisingly, Di Luca said, "The best thing would be to legalize drugs so the entire peloton is on a level playing field." Di Luca, showing little remorse or regret for his actions, revealed that he first learned about doping when he was an amateur. "I was always a champion, and won often. Then, when I left the amateur ranks, riders who had raced with me a month before were a month later stronger than me."

 He said that riders used to discuss doping openly, but due to recent scandals, there is much more secrecy. Riders are given advice from doctors, but must source their own doping products, unlike the days of team-sanctioned doping such as that at Festina or the US Postal Service team in the late 1990s.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/di-luca-90-per-cent-of-riders-in-giro-ditalia-were-doping

Monday, January 13, 2014

Sven Nys



http://www.cyclismas.com/biscuits/cyclismasvenness-2-14-azencross/

Friday, January 10, 2014

Currency Debasement World-wide

Fiat Currency vs 1 oz Gold1-Jan-20001-Jan-14% Change 
 Emirati Dirham1,057.254,427.88319% 
 Albanian Lek37,941.12122,671.84223% 
 Dutch Guilder480.962,136.96344% 
 Australian Dollar440.231,352.63207% 
 Barbadian or Bajan Dollar570.242,411.24323% 
 Bangladeshi Taka14,567.0493,556.11542% 
 Bahraini Dinar104.26454.52336% 
 Burundian Franc175,936.321,844,598.60948% 
 Bermudian Dollar271.301,205.62344% 
 Bruneian Dollar477.791,522.45219% 
 Bolivian Boliviano1,704.968,270.55385% 
 Brazilian Real535.682,847.49432% 
 Bahamian Dollar288.001,205.62319% 
 Botswana Pula1,324.8010,511.07693% 
 Belizean Dollar573.122,399.18319% 
 Canadian Dollar416.421,280.65208% 
 Congolese Franc1,224.861,086,263.6288584% 
 Swiss Franc459.071,076.55135% 
      
 Fiat Currency vs 1 oz Gold1-Jan-20001-Jan-14% Change 
 Chilean Peso152,438.40633,336.31315% 
 Chinese Yuan Renminbi2,384.507,296.41206% 
 Colombian Peso515,520.002,313,584.78349% 
 Costa Rican Colon84,833.28596,793.97603% 
 Cuban Peso6,048.0031,948.93428% 
 Cape Verdean Escudo30,269.6695,063.14214% 
 Czech Koruna10,308.9623,979.54133% 
 Djiboutian Franc49,608.00212,128.84328% 
 Danish Krone2,126.026,543.76208% 
 Dominican Peso4,556.1651,058.011021% 
 Algerian Dinar19,257.1294,146.86389% 
 Egyptian Pound979.728,377.25755% 
 Ethiopian Birr2,296.5122,982.13901% 
 Euro286.48877.27206% 
 Fijian Dollar576.002,288.14297% 
 British Pound178.25727.98308% 
 Gibraltar Pound178.36727.98308% 
 Gambian Dalasi3,217.8245,331.311309% 
 Guinean Franc389,836.808,171,692.361996% 
 Guatemalan Quetzal2,183.049,453.27333% 
      
 Fiat Currency vs 1 oz Gold1-Jan-20001-Jan-14% Change 
 Guyanese Dollar51,724.80244,692.64373% 
 Hong Kong Dollar2,238.919,348.46318% 
 Honduran Lempira4,184.6424,413.81483% 
 Croatian Kuna2,188.636,680.34205% 
 Haitian Gourde5,028.4852,637.37947% 
 Hungarian Forint72,763.20260,668.31258% 
 Indonesian Rupiah2,030,400.0014,660,942.01622% 
 Israeli Shekel1,195.494,182.30250% 
 Indian Rupee12,510.7274,608.38496% 
 Iranian Rial501,480.0029,868,029.885856% 
 Icelandic Krona20,805.12138,296.67565% 
 Jamaican Dollar11,865.60127,373.75973% 
 Jordanian Dinar203.90852.37318% 
 Japanese Yen29,416.32126,936.72332% 
 Kenyan Shilling20,908.80103,924.44397% 
 Comoran Franc139,115.52431,587.34210% 
 South Korean Won326,102.401,272,652.47290% 
 Kuwaiti Dinar87.55339.98288% 
 Caymanian Dollar361.36988.64174% 
 Lao or Laotian Kip2,462,400.009,644,960.00292% 
      
 Fiat Currency vs 1 oz Gold1-Jan-20001-Jan-14% Change 
 Lebanese Pound432,288.001,808,430.00318% 
 Sri Lankan Rupee20,563.20157,466.03666% 
 Liberian Dollar288.0097,594.9433787% 
 Basotho Loti1,771.2012,622.81613% 
 Lithuanian Litas1,146.243,029.03164% 
 Latvian Lat168.28614.87265% 
 Moroccan Dirham2,896.429,835.57240% 
 Burmese Kyat1,800.491,186,330.0865789% 
 Mongolian Tughrik302,227.201,977,216.80554% 
 Macau Pataca2,293.349,628.92320% 
 Mauritanian Ouguiya62,588.16347,218.56455% 
 Mauritian Rupee7,277.7636,349.44399% 
 Maldivian Rufiyaa3,121.9218,361.59488% 
 Malawian Kwacha13,305.60508,289.403720% 
 Malaysian Ringgit1,094.113,952.63261% 
 Nigerian Naira28,627.20192,778.63573% 
 Nicaraguan Cordoba3,490.5630,170.64764% 
 Norwegian Krone2,306.307,320.57217% 
 Nepalese Rupee19,903.68119,718.07501% 
 New Zealand Dollar551.201,466.30166% 
      
 Fiat Currency vs 1 oz Gold1-Jan-20001-Jan-14% Change 
 Omani Rial110.79463.92319% 
 Panamanian Balboa288.001,205.62319% 
 Peruvian Nuevo Sol1,010.023,369.11234% 
 Papua New Guinean Kina759.893,021.59298% 
 Philippine Peso11,586.2453,529.53362% 
 Pakistani Rupee14,918.40126,951.79751% 
 Paraguayan Guarani944,216.645,527,767.70485% 
 Qatari Riyal1,047.744,389.78319% 
 Rwandan Franc96,301.44811,382.26743% 
 Saudi Arabian Riyal1,080.004,521.62319% 
 Solomon Islander Dollar1,432.808,673.54505% 
 Seychellois Rupee1,545.1214,396.31832% 
 Swedish Krona2,444.547,762.25218% 
 Singapore Dollar479.291,522.45218% 
 Saint Helenian Pound178.36727.98308% 
 Sierra Leonean Leone545,322.245,169,698.56848% 
 Somali Shilling732,205.441,469,650.78101% 
 Sao Tomean Dobra664,427.5221,411,811.203123% 
 Salvadoran Colon2,505.6010,549.18321% 
 Syrian Pound12,322.08136,174.241005% 
      
 Fiat Currency vs 1 oz Gold1-Jan-20001-Jan-14% Change 
 Swazi Lilangeni1,771.2012,622.81613% 
 Thai Baht10,800.0039,411.72265% 
 Tunisian Dinar358.931,981.44452% 
 Tongan Pa'anga448.102,245.94401% 
 Trinidadian Dollar1,778.897,691.86332% 
 Taiwan New Dollar9,039.4636,028.15299% 
 Tanzanian Shilling228,096.001,907,290.84736% 
 Ukrainian Hryvna1,501.789,922.25561% 
 Ugandan Shilling426,974.403,038,162.40612% 
 US Dollar288.001,205.62319% 
 Uruguayan Peso3,329.2825,438.58664% 
 Vietnamese Dong4,015,296.0025,408,441.50533% 
 Ni-Vanuatu Vatu36,777.60114,955.87213% 
 Samoan Tala890.212,831.42218% 
 Central African CFA Franc BEAC187,358.40575,449.78207% 
 Silver Ounce53.4361.9216% 
 East Caribbean Dollar771.843,255.17322% 
 IMF Special Drawing Rights209.45782.51274% 
 CFP Franc33,744.96104,685.86210% 
 Yemeni Rial45,702.72258,967.18467% 
 South African Rand1,771.3412,622.81613% 
 Zimbabwean Dollar10,725.12436,313.883968%