The rate of inflation recently hit its highest level ever, 7,000 percent per year, causing international bodies to seek help from leading academics around the world to stabilize the situation before the country descended into chaos. A group of inflation fighters from the economics department at the University of Chicago has stepped into the breach, offering hope that the country may be able to reverse its current course with an infusion of market discipline.

"We were hoping for Bono," says Nkende Masvingo, referring to the rock singer who has made sub-Saharan poverty his personal crusade, "but they sent us Gary Becker because U2 was on tour."

Becker, the winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Economics, will lead a "dream team" including Steven Levitt, co-author of the best-selling pop economics book "Freakonomics", that will set up camp in this city, the nation's capital. "First, we need to understand the situation," said Becker. "Then, we'll bloviate on what people should do about it."