Serbia… Land of Billionaires

Yugoslavian money

It isn’t everyday you can move to a country and be surrounded by former billionaires. Serbia is one country that can boast that fact. Almost everyone that lived in Serbia during the 1990’s can brag about not just being a billionaire, but a MUTLI-BILLIONAIRE!

The U.S.A and other world powers love to put sanctions on “unfriendly” countries. It is usually the first step in punishing a nation for not abiding by their rules. This is a disgusting act that leads to mass starvation, shortage of life saving equipment, supplies, fuel, and it seems to punish ONLY the regular civilians. It also leads regular hard-working people into committing criminal acts just to feed their families!

During the 1990’s, Serbia was the heart of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was made up of Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia and Bosnia. Slovenia was the first one to declare its independence. The world was reacting to the fall of the “Iron Curtain” and the break up of the U.S.S.R.  There were some very brutal wars fought in this part of the planet to preserve the Yugoslavian lands.

N.A.T.O decided it would be best to slap on sanctions. For those of you not familiar with the term “sanctions” , as a noun, it means a threatened penalty for disobeying a law or rule. It keeps other nations from trading with them and keeps them from providing any financial assistance to them and keeping the “sanctioned” country from gaining access to its international funds. The majority of countries are drastically harmed by this act, Serbia included. Many of the families I have had the pleasure of talking with survived by smuggling gas, cigarettes, clothing, food, etc from their neighboring countries. This also lead to something called hyperinflation. Hyperinflation is extremely rapid or out of control inflation. There is no precise numerical definition to hyperinflation. Hyperinflation is a situation where the price increases are so out of control that the concept of inflation is meaningless.

worthless money

Many of the Serbian families worked very hard during this time in their history. Once they received their monthly pay they would rush to the store to use their paycheck before prices would skyrocket. I was told that many families would work all month and only be able to buy a few loaves of bread! 😮 Can you imagine???  If you ask many of them how in the world they were able to raise their kids, they will just shrug their shoulders. Many of them would share and trade what little they had and help their neighbor. Maybe you were good at fixing cars and your neighbor had a lot of tomatoes. You would fix their car for a bag of tomatoes. I think this is what has made Serbians the tough, unflappable people they are today.

Hungarian bill.. Largest ever recorded

The highest record of inflation was in Hungary held the record for the most extreme monthly inflation rate ever — 41,900,000,000,000,000% (4.19 × 10¹⁶% or 41.9 quadrillion percent) for July 1946 amounting to prices doubling every 15.3 hours.Yugoslavia ranks 2nd on the all time list with prices doubling every 1.4 days  See the chart below.

Highest hyperinflation

This  lead to bills in the billion dinar range! 😮 It looks and sounds good to have a billion dollar note, but when it won’t buy a loaf of bread it looses all of its glory!

500 Billion Dinars

It sounds like I am surrounded by a country full of Warren Buffets, but life was hard. I can sit here and imagine the stress that was put on all of these Serbian families during this time. They survived and continue to survive to this day!

Gotta love the Serbs…

Long live Serbia….

Please join our new Serbia page… SAY SERBIA! http://www.sayserbia.com/ and if you are capable of donating a few dollars, dinars, euro, pesos or whatever  to my documentary “Yankee Doodle Went to Serbia” please do!!!! Every little bit helps! Here is my donations page https://www.wepay.com/donations/serbia-through-american-eyes

The first episode of Yankee Doodle went to Serbia “RUMA”is going to be out in a week or two! Here is an update from Srem Tv……http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vksV7jyP9VY I need your help!!! I have lived on my savings for 3 years now. This first episode wasn’t cheap!!!! We had a very professional crew with us. One professional cameraman, sound guy, two lighting guys, one producer and one assistant producer. We had top of the line equipment and stayed 5 days in Ruma! We wanted to go all out on our first episode. If we can’t find more funding to make it this way, I will just strap a camera on my head and head out on my own. 🙂 😀 😦 I never ask Serbians in Serbia for a dinar, but anyone else that has a Visa, Mastercard, American Express credit or debit can donate. I have only had 15 people donate to this. 😥 If you can’t donate, please share to your friends that can! HELP ME SHOW THE WORLD WHY I FELL IN LOVE WITH SERBIA!   Hvala puno!!!!