What would happen if all Zimbabwe banks closed today?

“In the end, the strike would last a whole six months – 20 times as long as the New York City sanitation workers’ strike. But whereas across the pond a state of emergency had been declared after just six days, Ireland was still going strong after six months without bankers. ‘The main reason I cannot recollect much about the bank strike,’ an Irish journalist reflected in 2013, ‘was because it did not have a debilitating impact on daily life.’

“But without bankers, what did they do for money?

“Something quite simple: The Irish started issuing their own cash. After the bank closures, they continued writing checks to one another as usual, the only difference being that they could no longer be cashed at the bank. Instead, that other dealer in liquid assets – the Irish pub – stepped in to fill the void. At a time when the Irish still stopped for a pint at their local pub at least three times a week, everyone – and especially the bartender – had a pretty good idea who could be trusted. ‘The managers of these retail outlets and public houses had a high degree of information about their customers,’ explains the economist Antoin Murphy. ‘One does not after all serve drink to someone for years without discovering something of his liquid resources.’

“In no time, people forged a radically decentralized monetary system with the country’s 11 000 pubs as its key nodes and basic trust as its underlying mechanism. By the time the banks finally reopened in November, the Irish had printed an incredible £5 billion in homemade currency. Some checks had been issued by companies, others were scribbled on the backs of cigar boxes, or even on toilet paper. According to historians, the reason the Irish were able to manage so well without banks was all down to social cohesion.

“So were there no problems at all?

“No, of course there were problems. Take the guy who bought a racehorse on credit and then paid the debt with money he won when his horse came in first – basically, gambling with another person’s cash. It sounds an awful lot like what banks do now, but then on a smaller scale. And, during the strike, Irish companies had a harder time acquiring capital for big investments. Indeed, the very fact that people began do-it-yourself banking makes it patently clear that they couldn’t do without some kind of financial sector.

“But what they could do perfectly well without was all the smoke and mirrors, all the risky speculation, the glittering skyscrapers, and the towering bonuses paid out of taxpayers’ pockets. ‘Maybe, just maybe,’ the author and economist Umair Haque conjectures, ‘banks need people a lot more than people need banks.”

Could Zimbabweans last six months without banks?

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