Interview with the central banker of Zimbabwe

Newsweek has a most interesting interview with Gideon Gono, heralded as both an incompetent fool and a tragic hero, who has been at the center of Zimbabwe's economic decline since his appointment as governor of the country's Reserve Bank in 2003. 

According to Gono, 2009 is going to be a good year for Zimbabwe (mmm yes, I think printing off trillion dollar notes is a great start, too) and the cholera is under control. Huh. I guess we have it all wrong:

Now the global economy is also going through a credit crunch. What do you make of that? 
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.

Your critics blame your monetary policies for Zimbabwe's economic problems. I've been condemned by traditional economists who said that printing money is responsible for inflation. Out of the necessity to exist, to ensure my people survive, I had to find myself printing money. I found myself doing extraordinary things that aren't in the textbooks. Then the IMF asked the U.S. 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. I decided that God had been on my side and had come to vindicate me.

[HT: Marginal Revolution]