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What is going on in Argentina?

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Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#11
For those not keeping up with the news, Argentina used to be an extremely wealthy country, but went the reverse route many decades ago and has embraced peronism for awhile (kind of a mixture of socialism and fascism) that has led to rampant inflation.

They recently elected Javier Milei (an economist and former sex guru) who although some media claim is a radical rightwing candidate, center-right Libertarian might be more descriptive. He essentially wants to radically reduce government's role and put the country through (economic shock therapy) in the short term so they can have a chance of making a turn around. He has fired a huge amount of government staff he calls the "parasitic class" and I think they just recently actually balanced the budget for the first time in a decade. We'll see how things go. He's trying to get the country on the dollar and off the peso, so they'd just have to deal with the more sensible American inflation rate. It also makes some sense as everyone wants to use the dollar anyway and are basically doing it illegally. He is also removing a lot of government red tape for businesses.

He recently flew to Davos and basically told off those in attendance. Some of the things he says I agree with, but many others not so much. He seems to take a lot of Austrian economics views and if you're not familiar with this, it is essentially the ideology that folks like Ron Paul and a lot of the libertarian think tanks (e.g. Cato institute) proclaim. He said a lot of things that are counter to basic economics like "market failures don't exist". I think he believes that given no regulations, things would always sort themselves out, but zero regulations brings about another kind of hell IMO. He also pulled Argentina out of the BRICS negotiations (kind of a very loose federation of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) as he didn't want to get involved with communists. Only time will tell if this will be a huge failure or just what the country needs.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#12
I was there a few months ago. For me (without dollars), the best way to get cash was to western union it to myself. They tend to have rates at or around the dollar blue rate. The only painful part of this is that if you send yourself more than around $100 you're going to have to try various western union shops before finding one with enough cash.

The other thing to note is that Mastercard (and Visa I believe) have a newer rate specifically aimed at tourists (the MEP rate), which normally stays closer to the informal rate (blue dollar rate). Annoyingly they tend to charge your account with the official rate, and then refund the difference a few days later.

There's also this website which has a view of all the different rates: https://bluedollar.net/

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#13

“To give you have an idea, within the first 2 days in Argentina, I dealt with over five different rates. A restaurant actually offered me the proper blue rate (1100) to pay for the bill, whereas one cueva (informal exchange house) offered me 1050 and another 1070. The kiosk where I bought a SIM card from had it at 1060, and Uber, who did the currency conversion themselves rather than leaving it up to my credit card,…

There's that thing about the largest bill being 2000 pesos atm, and even that being rare.

You might need a bag to carry cash for the whole trip, and it will attract the wrong kind of attention?

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#14

“To give you have an idea, within the first 2 days in Argentina, I dealt with over five different rates. A restaurant actually offered me the proper blue rate (1100) to pay for the bill, whereas one cueva (informal exchange house) offered me 1050 and another 1070. The kiosk where I bought a SIM card from had it at 1060, and Uber, who did the currency conversion themselves rather than leaving it up to my credit card,…

I am told as of last year, if you pay for things with Visa or Mastercard credit, they give you the blue dollar rate as well.

[deleted]

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#15

“To give you have an idea, within the first 2 days in Argentina, I dealt with over five different rates. A restaurant actually offered me the proper blue rate (1100) to pay for the bill, whereas one cueva (informal exchange house) offered me 1050 and another 1070. The kiosk where I bought a SIM card from had it at 1060, and Uber, who did the currency conversion themselves rather than leaving it up to my credit card,…

Exactly, EUR/HUF rates would be infuriating in Hungary if I wanted to pay with EUR in restaurants.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#17

“To give you have an idea, within the first 2 days in Argentina, I dealt with over five different rates. A restaurant actually offered me the proper blue rate (1100) to pay for the bill, whereas one cueva (informal exchange house) offered me 1050 and another 1070. The kiosk where I bought a SIM card from had it at 1060, and Uber, who did the currency conversion themselves rather than leaving it up to my credit card,…

Actually we found we got better rates elsewhere (El Chaltén hotels for example would exchange at the daily blue rate from DolarYa) plus the random restaurants were the ones usually offering the legit rate. Unlike the cueva, they actually don't have leverage, and would love to get their hands on some dollars.

We never exchanged money like this, but were happy to pay the bill in dollars at the end (prices were never set in dollars). And the math checked out completely.

Note we also came with a similar-ish mentality. Let's exchange early on and be set. But this misses out a key point (that hopefully will become less relevant). The currency devalues fast. Exchange early on and you might find yourself holding a lot less than you got.

We spent a month in Argentina, and had we done this, we'd have taken a 9% hit just on devaluation.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#18

“To give you have an idea, within the first 2 days in Argentina, I dealt with over five different rates. A restaurant actually offered me the proper blue rate (1100) to pay for the bill, whereas one cueva (informal exchange house) offered me 1050 and another 1070. The kiosk where I bought a SIM card from had it at 1060, and Uber, who did the currency conversion themselves rather than leaving it up to my credit card,…

I guess some US cards also charge a lot for foreign transactions? I always paid in pesos on card, and in fact I don't think anyone ever even tried to charge me in dollars.

Also, with Uber, you're not likely to get many rides if you pay by card.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#19

They elected a freakin' maniac and they're gonna pay a heavy price for that. In Brazil we have a saying "pior que tá não fica", which translates to something like "it cannot get worse than this". Belive me when I say this: it can (and probably will) get worse. It can (and probably will) get SO MUCH worse. We tasted this poison with 4 years of Bolsonaro trying to get away from the establishment. What did we get in ret…

Did you read the article?
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