From Celia Dugger’s arti­cle in the Times today about a Zim­bab­wean cholera epi­demic that has infected 16,000 people and killed 780:

Infla­tion offi­cially hit 231 mil­lion per­cent in July, but John Robert­son, an inde­pen­dent econ­o­mist in Zim­babwe, esti­mates that it has now surged to an astound­ing eight quin­til­lion per­cent — that is an eight fol­lowed by 18 zeros.

For the record, that’s 8,000,000,000,000,000,000%

(Photo by the New York Times.)