Zimbabwe Schwarzenegger

"Zimbabweans are facing a deepening humanitarian crisis and what appears to be a renewed security crackdown, just weeks before President Robert Mugabe plans to set up a new government. ... This week, the government released a new 50-billion-dollar note--valued at little more than one U.S. dollar. ... State services have collapsed. Most district hospitals and clinics, especially in rural areas, have been closed since the begining of January, because they have no drugs, materials or means to pay their staff. Mothers struggle to deliver their babies. HIV/AIDS patients eat medicinal herbs dug from the ground. 'The whole country is turning into some kind of giant mortuary,' aid Douglas Gwatidza, head of the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights. Health workers are charging their patients in foreign currency, then sharing the profit among themselves. 'The government cannot pay us, so we have to find ways of paying ourselves,' said one nurse, Ethel Ngunda. It isn't just health-care workers who have turned their business into a private practice. Police officers demand extra to follow up on complaints. Some public-school teachers have refused to go to work unless parents pay them directly, in foreign currency. ... Soldiers in recent months have demanded to be paid in foreign currency, which the government can't afford. Instead, soldiers roam city streets, looting market stalls and stealing from citizens, on the pretext of hunting down illegal foreign-currency dealers. Some have hired themselves out as debt collectors", my emphasis, WSJ, 14 January 2009.

When will these conditions come to the US? California first!