Stupid Economics Question?

Question

This one is for the economists. It is an admittedly stupid question. What is to stop a speculator or group of speculators from buying up Zimbabwe's almost worthless currency at the current exchange rate and waiting for the inevitable bloody coup to sink the current government? It would seem to me that any change in the gvernment would lead to some kind of economic recovery, and, if it is possible to buy into Zimbabwe dollars for something on the order of a billion Zimbabwe dollars to one American dollar, the returns would be on an order of magnitude if Zimbabwe's inflation dropped into the four to five figure range, rather than the four million percent it is currently at.

Answer 1

Countries that experience hyperinflation  usually issue new currency  using the current value  for the exchange from old to new, so the value of the current currency will not increase in value when  the current problems end. An end to inflation only means that the value  of the currency would stop falling, not that it would return to the previous value.

Answer 2

Zimbabwe currency being printed now is essentially worthless, and will not be recognized by any future - hopefully normalized - Zimbabwean government.  New currency will be valued and printed and anything that Mugabe is printing now will be souvenir material.

Take a look at history.  For example, the German Weimar Republic of post-WWI.  Inflation was rampant and the expression 'a wheelbarrow full of cash for a loaf of bread' got its start.  That government failed and its currency became obsolete.  You can buy a 20K mark note on eBay as a collectors item for ten bucks - it has zero worth as a monetary unit.