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What is going on in Argentina?

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Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#21

Post by kragen »

this is a pretty good post

if you're interested in what the fuck is going on in argentina, you might try

    git clone http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/pavnotes2.git
and read milei-diary.md, which are my observations here on the ground, after having lived here most of my adult life. it's been a few weeks since i added an entry to it, but i'll update it again soon

one minor problem with the post: 'the white rate' is a phrase this blogger made up; if you talk to people about 'the white rate' or 'el dólar blanco' or 'el tipo de cambio blanco' nobody will have any idea what you're talking about

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#24

Post by luzojeda »

kingofthehill98 wrote: post #8

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…

The alternative was the economy minister largely responsible of how we got to where we are now. Minister of a president who basically said "you know what I'm out" in 2022 and basically gave the government to said minister.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#25

Post by ramblerman »

7thaccount wrote: post #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…

I think this is a pretty fair assessment of Milei.

Do you feel the sex guru part adds much though? Maybe he is in an open relationship, or actually gay, or xyz... does it matter in his economic reform plans for Argentina?

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#26

Post by bitdivision »

nottorp wrote: post #13
verticalscaler wrote: post #5

“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?

This is very accurate. Normally western union will give you notes of 1000 pesos, which is just about manageable in pockets if you're getting a few hundred dollars.

I had one instance where there was only one western union I could use (because of the weekend) and they only had 100 and 200 peso notes. I walked out with 300 dollars worth of notes in a black bin bag and hurriedly tried to find a taxi before anyone noticed...

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#27

Post by swarnie »

kingofthehill98 wrote: post #8

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…

We've tested many different ideologies and organisational structures just in the last few hundred years.

Currently we have a successful but pretty crappy form of capitalism. Some countries have experimented with Communism, fascism, oligarchy (ism)?), feudalism ect ect.

Why not give libertarianism a shot?

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#29

Post by NotASithLord »

kingofthehill98 wrote: post #8

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? It’s all about the currency problems and disparate exchange rates that have resulted in the country for the last 20+ years and has nothing to do with the president who’s been there for hardly 2 months. One of his first acts actually tackled that problem by slashing the artificial government exchange rate so that it’s much closer to the true black market rate.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#30

Post by pjc50 »

Some background: https://www.ft.com/content/09e9e924-5ba9-11e9-9dde-7aedca0a0... "Argentina’s foreign exchange regime is broken" and https://www.elibrary.imf.org/display/book/9781557753649/ch01... "Multiple Exchange Rate Systems: The Case of Argentina"

Fixed exchange rates are effectively an import subsidy. This staves off the problems of massive price spikes in things like petrol and medicines, but devalues the (already struggling) exports. At least Argentina is self-sufficient in food.

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