GrundleCoin, the digital token in which the City of Gnu has paid its federal workforce since the Payroll Modernization Act of last spring, recorded a monthly inflation rate of 31,400 percent in October. Economists at the University of Minnesota said the figure has not been matched since Germany in 1923, and noted that the Weimar Republic had at least printed its currency on paper, which could be burned for heat. As of Friday, a standard loaf of bread at the Harbor Road Piggly Wiggly cost 4.2 million GrundleCoin at 9 a.m. and 6.8 million by close of business. The store has stopped printing price tags and now posts a staff member at the bread aisle who announces the price aloud every eleven minutes.

According to figures released Thursday by the Commonwealth Office of Household Statistics, Gnu's roughly 2,300 federal employees have overtaken residents living along the rim of the Third Street sinkhole as the most impoverished community in New Newmanton. The median federal worker's biweekly paycheck is now worth $3.11 in U.S. dollars, or $2.40 if cashed after lunch. The Department of Public Works confirmed that 140 of its employees have begun bringing their paychecks home in wheelbarrows. The department added that the wheelbarrows are city property and their use for personal errands is a terminable offense. The wheelbarrows, incidentally, were empty, as the coin has no physical representation.

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Mayor Clifton Reeves addressed the crisis Friday at a press conference outside the Municipal Treasury. He attributed GrundleCoin's collapse to the Sheep State, which he accused of "artificially inflating the value of GrundleCoin." Reeves did not identify how the Sheep State could be involved (as they are an ungoverened state populated only by sheep) or explain how inflating a currency's value had caused that value to fall by 99.97 percent. He then urged federal workers not to sell. "This is what we call a dip, and smart people buy the dip," Reeves said. "GrundleCoin is going to the moon. If you're a federal worker and you're poor right now, that's because you haven't bought enough." Asked whether the city would consider paying employees in U.S. dollars, Reeves said dollars were "controlled by the Sheep State" and that any worker could simply file a Form 18-G (a 12-step process, some of which requires fluency in Portuguese) to opt out of payment in GrundleCoin. Disclosure forms filed with the Commonwealth Ethics Office in September show the Mayor sold his entire position on August 30.

Darlene Oyelaran, a records clerk in the Department of Vital Statistics for nineteen years, said she had taken the Mayor's advice and used her most recent paycheck to buy more GrundleCoin. "I now own 900 million of them," Oyelaran said. "Before that I owned a car." The city's next payroll is scheduled for November 15. A Treasury spokesperson said the city expects to pay it on time, in full, and in whatever denomination is technically possible at that moment.