Argentina's Milei says shutting central bank 'non-negotiable'
Argentina's Milei says shutting central bank 'non-negotiable'
Argentina's President-elect Javier Milei said on Friday that the closure of the country's central bank, a signature campaign pledge, was a "non-negotiable matter", according to a statement from his office posted on social media platform X.
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Shuttering their central bank and converting to dollars... Meaning they aren't actually getting rid of a central bank, but are rather converting to a foreign central bank.
No it’s worse than that. How are they going to purchase enough dollars to replace their own currency? No one is going to give Argentina a loan to do this.
This project is doomed before it starts.
Permanently Deleted
The gang solved the Argentinian inflation.... music starts
Also, Bitcoin!
Good ol' Mac with the plan!
You get dollars the same way anyone else would in the situation: You carry a trade surplus vs. the United States and then allow tax payments to be made in dollars. Prices settle as a function of dollars available, rate of circulation, and volume of goods & services available.
The policy should produce a boost in exports & employment but also produce a shortage of goods normally imported. It'll also be a great time for Americans to visit, the dollar suddenly having a lot more purchasing power in Argentina.
The idea is that since the government can't run a surplus by itself, he will break the capacity of running into deficit and making it so they don't have any other choice.
It's a nice-looking, simple idea that some countries try here and there and never work on practice.
never work on practice
There are several countries that use the dollar, including, in Latin America, Ecuador and Panama. They are doing fine.
More pertinently, Zimbabwe's famous hyperinflation was ended by dollarizing.
So it's not an outright crazy idea. I think the doomposting is mainly due to "right-wing therefore bad".
It seems the whole point is adopting a currency they can't print more of. Because of the 'print more money' thing doesn't seem to be solving their inflation issues.
For some context, during the last 4 years the quantity of money our governemnt needed to print* was so high that our printers weren't enough and we had to pay other countries to print more pesos.
For some context, during the last 4 years the quantity of money our governemnt needed to print* was so high that our printers weren’t enough and we had to pay other countries to print more pesos.
Usually in modern language "printing money" is simply the central bank moving a numbers on a spreadsheet, not necessarily creating new currency notes. This is especially true if the newly "printing money" is being used to repay foreign debts.
Are you saying Argentina is actually running out of currency? If so, where is it all going?
The goverment spends more than it can, so to pay it's debts, the goverment print more and more money. This makes each bill to have less and less value generating inflation. So everyone needs more currency to pay for the same things, so the goverment prints even more money and the cicle never ends.
The goverment spends more than it can, so to pay it’s debts, the goverment print more and more money. This makes each bill to have less and less value generating inflation.
That's a good explanation about how a government can cause rapid (or even hyper)-inflation, but most of this impact isn't felt with people handling currency as far as number of bills they have to carry.
A government devaluing its currency usually prints larger denomination notes. As an example:
If a home appliance like a stove costs 100 Argentinian Pesos it might be paid for with ten 10 Peso notes for a total of 100 Pesos.
After a couple of years of rapid inflation the same stove might cost 2000 Argentinian Pesos. While someone buying a stove could technically still use two hundred 10 Peso notes for a total of 2000 Pesos, that's a lot of currency to carry. Instead government print larger denomination notes. A quick look at the wikipedia page on the Argentinian Peso confirms what I'm talking about. In May of this year, they started printing a 2000 Peso note. So that stove from the example could be paid with a single note, not two hundred.
I would guess usually when these larger notes are being printed the same number of notes in circulation doesn't need to change that much because the new notes are worth exponentially more than the old notes they would have produced in the same amount of time. In May of 2017 the smallest denomination note was 20 Pesos. However, in May 2023 the smallest denomination note is 100 Pesos.
If that is the case, where is the need to increase the number of notes in circulation, when the value of each note has gone up so much more?
To be fair, Argentina was never really self-sufficient in money-printing. Brazil has so much volatility on the usage of the printers that it's always cheaper for other countries in South America to import.
But yes, the amount they have been importing recently was completely out of the norm.
It's not like the fed dosen't print money as crazy too.
And the Dollarzone grew three sizes that day