try a regular bank...
Posted on 05/20/2012 12:35:26 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
Along a busy street in the Argentine capital, the man in the brown suit doesn't need to speak above a whisper to sell his goods: "Money change. Money change." Those who want to swap pesos for dollars follow him through a run-down mall to a lingerie store. There, amid bras and pantyhose, he closes deals for greenbacks.
Argentines have increasingly turned to such black market money changers since President Cristina Fernandez sharply restricted purchases of dollars in banks and exchange houses to try to keep hard currency from pouring out of the country.
Argentina has been kept from global capital markets since defaulting on its debt during a financial crisis a decade ago, so Fernandez's government wants to keep dollars in the country to replenish central bank reserves and pay government debts. Argentines, meanwhile, are haunted by nightmares of the crisis, when banks froze deposits and the currency lost value. So they are eager for dollars to stash in vaults or under their mattress. Others send them abroad for safekeeping.
Many economists say the new black market spawned by currency controls could choke back Argentina's economic growth and create even more inflation: Controls make it harder for people to do business and undermine confidence in the peso, causing it to devalue even more quickly. That can create the threat of shortages when people are unwilling to sell goods for a currency they do not trust. The curbs could also encourage Argentines to withdraw dollars from banks.
Under the controls imposed shortly after Fernandez won re-election in October, the country's tax agency, known as the AFIP, must approve all purchases of dollars. The formal exchange rate was 4.47 pesos per dollar on Friday, a slide of about 8.6 percent from where the peso was a year ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Per a comment on zero hedge , Argentina has money sniffing dogs at border crossings.. USD cash is exiting for Uruguay.
I tried to buy 500 ordinary One-dollar us coins friday at my credit union. You cannot. They say they do not stock them. They could sell me one $25 roll of wrapped coins for collecting though. Anyone else find this happening? (I want $1.00 coins in case ATMs fail us.
The “experts” who believe that Greece can have a somewhat orderly transition to the Drachma after exiting the EU should read this.
The black market will *explode.*
You probably couldn’t get $2 bills either. The just aren’t worth the trouble stocking in large amounts if no one wants them. Did you try to order some for delivery later?
For some reason, socialists have “pattern agnosia”, lack of pattern recognition, in which they are unable to recognize that their means to ends do not result in those ends, no matter how hard or repetitively they try.
Some of them do recognize that the ends they want have not been achieved, so they blame either a lack of resources, or sabotage, or both, for not achieving those ends. They will not even consider that the means or the process is at fault, or that they inherently cannot achieve the desired ends through those means.
Others will insist that the desired ends have been achieved, despite all evidence to the contrary, to the point of sounding delusional.
The end result is that they are on a continual loop of failure, consuming as many resources as they can in the process, while demanding more, and when they fail, yet again, they ignore the failure and demand to start over in exactly the same way.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It'll soon toll for us.
My uncle nearly got caught smuggling diamonds out of some South American country (maybe Brazil) for payment on some industrial equipment when their government refused to allow payment in dollars back in the seventies.
try a regular bank...
Yes, you would think after Cuba, Detroit, North Korea, California, Greece, Chicago, Argentina, the Soviet Union etc., they would start to get it.
What about precious metals purchasing and smuggling in Argentina or similar places? I have always thought that someone would melt down Pt, Ag or Au (painted) and fashion it into a metal auto part or panel that would be relatively easy to conceal.
500-BOX CHESTER ARTHUR ROLL - P
2012 Chester Arthur Presidential $1 Coin 500-Coin Box, Philadelphia (BL1)
Price: $550.95
Product will be available for shipping 06/15/2012
They should just adopt the US dollar as their official currency.
Argentinian government wants to retain the power to print their own currency so that they can fund their bureaucracy and crony capital enterprises with an inflated currency. Inflation robs savers and profitable enterprises, and that’s just the way the statists want it.
The Argentine economy could not match the productivity gains of the US economy. Argentine exporters found in increasingly difficult to sell in international markets. In other words it failed.
As the Europeans are finding out you have to not only match economic policy but all policies that affect economic performance for a single currency to work.
Obama is turning us more into a banana republic everyday and if the rest of South America can match and improve on the performance of Chile and Brazil we might meet in the middle some day.
I believe it is called Insanity, and Socialist, Progressives, and liberals are all afflicted with the disorder to one degree or another.
ping
Cognitive Dissonance. They are so wrapped up in, and emotionally committed to, their ideology that they can’t even process, let alone accept, the reality of its failure.
Like Goldfinger?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.