Re: Segura comments

["Maria Laura Segura" <msegur@xxxxxxxx>]

Greg,


We have been thinking in dollar prices for almost a decade. In the
middle 80 only big figures were quoted in dollars. But since
inflation start growing faster and when it became hyperinflation,
everybody start quoting prices in dollars. We substitud our currency
for dollars, even working class people got used to being paid in
dollars. Wages were paid weekly and even daily,  something that was
absolutely unusual in our country. We never kept our currency, we
spend it immediately or change it in the black market.
I've been in Brazil during their inflation and they only dollarized
their economy when inflation was really high. In Brazil the shops
wouldn't accept dollars even though they had a significant inflation,
in Argentina you could pay your supermarket bill with dollars. Cents
meant nothing, we stopped having coins. We had to take ceros out of
the bills a few times (since 1983 I thing we took out 8 ceros),
people (especially old people) found it maddening they couldn't
learn to quote prices.

It was  quite a picturesque situation if you're watching it from the
outside. It's a maddening situation if you're living it.


During the last years we have got used to quoting prices in pesos and
we are learning to precciate them.

Laura

> I'm curious about the decription of Argentine inflation.  Ak
> Brazilian friend said that during the great Brazilian inflation
> contracts and prices were often quoted in "unidades"--usually
> a dollar-derived amount.  So that the real "price sense" in
> the country was constantly based on dollar equivalents and
> everyone just used their calculators to figure outhow much
> local currency was to be exchanged at a particular moment.
>
> Was it likethat in Argentina?
> \
> Greg Nowell
>
>

All the ideas expressed above represent my own opinion. They
shouldn't be taken as representing Mecon's opinions.