You poor buggers - Rand near R12 to the USD

Graph above is the Aussie Dollar Vs the Rand

Johannesburg - The rand has gone into freefall against major currencies in a volatile trading day.
In late trading on Wednesday night, the rand was bid at R11.81/$ from a previous close of R10.6550. It was bid at R15.03/€ from a previous R13.8936 and at R19.04/£ from R17.7622 before.

Analysts said that the local currency was being knocked by emerging market risk aversion as fears of a global recession continue to haunt international markets. However, they expected the local currency to recover when the most recent bout of panic subsides

I can remember when we came over here it was R4.20 to the Aussie Dollar. The Aussie Dollar has also dropped a bit recently, from approx AUD 0.92 to AUD 0.70, but is recovering a bit recently after the Rudd Government here pumped $ 10.4b Dollars into the economy in tax breaks etc and lowered the interest rate on mortgages (via the big banks) by 1% with about another 1% to follow on Melbourne Cup day. Our Share market has fallen along with the rest of the world and is particularly worrying for those near retirement and for all our Superannuation funds, but generally we are being assured that we will feel the pinch, but are largely better off than most countries in the world as we have a particularly strong economy and demand for resources is still strong. The Government is now also guaranteeing your savings you have in the banks for the man in the street up to $1m, although over that it seems you would have to apy an "insurance fee", but I guess that if you have a million in the bank, you could afford that anyway.