Tuesday, February 05, 2013

Argentina Freezes Food Prices In Effort To Stem Runaway Inflation

Oh Argentina…the poster-child for incompetent and corrupt government in handling of financial affairs. They just announced they are freezing food prices to “control” inflation. Of course the official inflation rate is reported around 10%, but unofficially it is around 30%:
 Read the rest here.

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mjl said...

Wow, this is frightening.

rabidgandhi said...

Utter bollocks.

1st: there was no price "freeze." There is an informal agreement between the major super market chains and the Ministry of the Interior not to raise prices over the summer, but none of the predictions of merchandise shortages have come true.

2nd: Yes there is inflation, but it is not "runaway" and nothing near the hyper-inflation we experienced in the 70s and 80s (4000%)when we were following the IMF's diktats. Inflation has been steady at 15-25% for the last five years, but salaries have been rising even faster. This may sound harsh to the US or European investor class, but the economy has been growing at an average of 8% for the last decade, and that necessarily entails inflation. What we have seen here is a huge portion of the population pulled out of poverty and an internal consumption based economy, which alot of countries north of us should envy not demean.

3. I am not a fan of this government, but it is in no way "incompetent" and is far less corrupt than the governments up yonder that engineer one financial crisis after another at the behest of their banker cronies.