By Steve Knight/managing editor

Zimbabwe is a country of starving billionaires.

The price of a loaf of bread, if any bread can be found in Zimbabwe’s empty grocery stores, was priced at $70 trillion Zimbabwean dollars, according to The Herald, the state-owned newspaper, in a Jan. 30 report.

According to the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based public policy foundation, the annual inflation rate is an estimated 89.7 sextillion percent.

No, that is not a misprint.

89,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 percent.

The schools are closed because the teachers have stopped going to work.

The hospitals are closed because the nurses have stopped going to work.

Many doctors have fled to South Africa, along with thousands of other Zimbabweans.

Sewage and trash fill the streets of Harare, the capital, because no running water or sanitation exists.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 3,000 people have died from a cholera outbreak that has affected more than 57,000 people.

All broadcasting and main newspapers are state-owned and tightly controlled.

Any independent press is under severe duress from the government.

Broadcasters, such as CNN and BBC, have been banned from the country.

The architect of this disaster is 84-year-old President Robert Mugabe, the head of state of this southern Africa country since gaining independence from Britain in 1980.

Despite calls from world leaders for him to resign, Mugabe continues to hold on to power.

“The only persons with the power to remove Robert Gabriel Mugabe are the people of Zimbabwe,” he said in a December speech. “I will never, never, never surrender. Zimbabwe is mine.

“I won’t be intimidated. Even if I am threatened with beheading. Zimbabwe belongs to us, not the British.”

Mugabe blames the woes of his country on the British and American governments while his people starve and die of cholera.

Mugabe recently swore in his political rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, as prime minister, attempting to form a power-sharing government.

But Mugabe holds onto the presidency, and his political party holds on to key government positions.

Mr. Mugabe, I don’t know what planet you are living on, but for your poor people’s sake, resign.

Quit.

Go away.

Step down before any more innocent people die.

They are better off without you.