Argentina bans dollar purchases for savings | Hacker News Reader

Argentina bans dollar purchases for savings

bloomberg.com

53 pointswslh97 comments

As I live here and have a consulting company here, I'm familiar with the complexities of dealing with dollars. I'm a hacker by nature and spend a lot of time now trying to 'hack' the financial world of the Argentine peso. In that sense I think the article is worth posting.

Incidentally, Argentina must do this because they have no access to foreign capital markets due to things like seizure of YPF, devaluation of the peso in 2001, and failure to pay back the lenders they still owe, etc. Foreign currency reserves just keep dwindling. As China slows down and demand for soybeans drops, Argentina is really, really going to have a hard time. So though it seems crazy there is some "reason" for it (I'm not trying to make a political comment, I personally think it's crazy and they should radically open the market, but my point is that it's not exclusively xenophobia that is driving this policy).

Unfortunately the policy just pushes the trade to the black market. One of the interesting things here is that if you need pesos, and you have some access to USD, you make an instant 20-25% on your money. The "black market" (they call it "blue" here because it seems nicer) continues to diverge. If you're a hobbyist economist like myself, it's really fascinating to watch market risk priced into a currency in realtime as seen by the "blue"-vs-official rate spread.

Having to fake an exchange rate sounds like the economic conditions in badly run countries like Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Russia, etc.

What I am wondering is, with a depressed economy like that in Argentina, what is crime and personal safety like? I am particularly wondering about violent crimes for money, because how people react to a bad economy is determined quite strongly by culture and not just the economic situation alone.

Depressed economy? Argentina's economy is growing since 2002 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Latin_America_GDP_per_capi...

Argentinian Economy is slowing. Just look at this year results. It seems to go to an stagflation stage.

If you are Argentinian you know why the economy was growing since 2002: A local minima on previous years, devaluation, Soy and other commodities rising more than 2x and the farm sector investment on improving the efficiency with technology.

Thanks for confirming my point. But, I'm afraid I can't confirm your presages.

I was not confirming your point... you only said that Economy was growing since 2002.

Obviously nobody (that I know) see the future.

You did confirm it. He said the economy has been growing since 2002 and that's true even if the growth rate has slowed down. Going from 7% to 3% annual growth rate is still a growing economy.

Discounting inflation the economy is contracting in June

The Argentina economy isn't in a depression or recession, just oddly managed. But yes, crime, especially robberies, is extremely high.

If you look at these months results it is going to the recession route

Russia has it's issues, but lumping it with Zimbabwe and Venezuela is ridiculous and shows how little you know about all three countries.

Here are some quick facts for the downvoters- Russia has one of the world's largest foreign currency reserves, a tech scene that has produced some world-known companies/products (Yandex, Rambler (nginx), KupiVIP, etc) and a fairly lively startup scene. It also isn't bad place to visit for a tourist- I can go on and on, but the point is even a rudimentary knowledge of the subject should prevent people from making these types of generalizations.

It's also among the most corrupt major economies in the world. On a ten-point scale (higher is better), Italy is at 3.9, Greece at 3.4, Mexico at 3. Russia? 2.4.

http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/

I hear they kill entrepreneurs there too.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4201668

Corruption is Russia's biggest problem and certainly some entrepreneurs are in prison due to official corruption but that doesn't justify lumping it with Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Also, it should be noted that the word "entrepreneur" has a far different history in Russia than it does in the West. Many entrepreneurs got started in the 80s as "cooperatives" selling cheaply made jeans and other consumer goods in open air markets to a populace that had cash but little consumer goods to spend it on. This kind of private "profiteering" was illegal in the USSR thus the people doing this were already breaking the law and were getting used to getting away with this "crime." With the collapse of the USSR many of these groups expanded into other businesses- currency exchange, car sales, etc. Unfortunately, since the roots were illegal, many of the 80s entrepreneurs came from the elements of society that were willing to risk breaking the law to make money- often these people had a different view of competition- rather than make a better product or offer lower prices, it was much easier to beat up or sometimes kill your competition. As the 80s transitioned into the 90s, the violent groups became more and more powerful, with the early 90s becoming associated with open warfare among these groups. Those that survived into the late 90s, turned into legitimate businessmen - gone were the illicit activities, now these guys run banks, shopping centers, dealerships, real estate firms, etc. However many of them do have blood on their hands (and I'm not even talking about the large scale oligarchs and how they got their wealth)- should they be allowed to get away with murder or theft?

How do I know this (other than a general interest in the subject)? My dad was intimately involved with the cooperatives in the 80s, we fled to the US during the early 90s, some of his friends (and sometimes their families) that remained in business didn't survive. I remember going back home in the mid-90s when things were still a bit crazy and driving through the city with armed escorts- some of the stories that I heard would raise the hair on your neck.

I'm not putting it on par with Venezuela and Zimbabwe. I said major economies. Russia is a member of the G8. Neither Venezuela nor Zimbabwe fall within the G7, G8, or G20, as Venezuela is the 34th ranked economy (just ahead of Greece), and Zimbabwe ranks 130th (ahead of Malta and Mongolia).

Russia's peers are India, Canada, Spain, and Australia, 3 of which (CSA) are markedly less corrupt. Even India rates 3.1 to Russia's 2.4.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

My original comment was to the poster that said "Having to fake an exchange rate sounds like the economic conditions in badly run countries like Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Russia, etc."

I love the downvoters who don't respond, just downvote.

>Having to fake an exchange rate sounds like the economic conditions in badly run countries like Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Russia, etc.

"Badly run countries"? Zimbabwe maybe, but for Venezuela and Russia, I beg to differ. They are doing things THEIR way, not the US/neo-liberals way that would like a better slice of the pie, but Venezuela is much better off than all the dictatorships and banana republics in the region, and Russia is way better than when Yeltsin did things that benefited certain foreign interests...

The Venezuelan way is faking the value of the Bolivar and pushing everyone to the black market to buy dollars.The official rate is Bs.4.30 per dollar. The black market rate is almost Bs.10 per dollar.

Are you aware that most of the products we consume here are imported? Venezuela almost does not produce anything other than oil.

So , the clothes you buy, the medicines,food,etc,etc, everything has to be imported. Not everyone gets access to dollars from the government , so you have to buy dollars in the black market to import products. This causes the 25-28% yearly inflation rate we have. In the end, the people pay the price.

The solution from the government against the black market rate : make it illegal to even talk about the black market rate. Basically,censor it.

I hardly think that is the proper way to run an economy.

I think the Saudis might disagree !

Did you read my entire comment? Do the saudis have a fake controlled economy?

I'm not sure they actually have an economy. Those in charge sell oil and buy toys for themselves - the rest get very poor.

Things always look dandy in the oil exporting countries when oil prices are high. Iran, Venezuela and Russia all fall under this category. Their political, social and economic cracks begin to show when they can no longer throw oil dollars at problems.

Chavez announced a couple of years ago that Venezuela had a "bulletproof" economy and that we would not be affected by the evils of the capitalist breakdown.

As soon as oil prices went down, our economy started shrinking.

When oil prices are lower, the government cannot keep the fake value of the Bolivar and they have to devalue. In the end, the people pay the price with ultra-high inflation rates (28% in 2011).

Ah, Chavista propaganda, how delightful. Is that why Chavez is trying to strong-arm the so-called banana republics in the region into an economic "alliance" akin to the Euro, but where Chavez retains control over the currency? You can't trust those silly banana republics to be responsible over their own economies, you have to uplift them with the SUCRE, isn't that right? Gotta issue the currency in Caracas because you can't trust the banana republics to mint it, isn't that right?

Interesting how you (and many foreigners) call us neo-liberals, but liberals here insist it's neo-cons ruining the world.

How do you get information on these spreads? Are people who accept illicit trades openly advertising their services or maybe even rates? Or is this more underground like moonshine or drug trade, and do you need to be 'on the inside' to have access to these services? That last situation would seriously hamper liquidity and dampen the 'real-time' aspect tremendously, no?

In Venezuela, it's illegal to even offer dollars at the black market rate. But you can even go to a public square in front of the Congress and find people selling and buying dollars in the street.

The government even went as far to block websites that published the black market rate online. You can imagine how effective that was.

These kind of controls only generate corruption in the end. Its widely known that if you are willing to pay enough and know the right people in the government, you can get dollars assigned at the official rate for anything you want.

Online newspapers post the rates daily. Buying from the black master is just a matter of heading downtown and looking for people offering exchange in the streets. It's accessible for anyone.

People in the streets buy/cell. They are called "arbolitos" (little trees)

For big sums it is not that hard to find a "cueva" (cave)

http://dolarblue.net/

This is a pretty standard example of capital controls being implemented in non-free countries by the bureaucratic elite in order to impose hidden costs on their people and to prevent the people from responding rationally to terrible economic policy.

The reasons are easy to understand. People are willing to take on the risk of owning hard currency (gold, dollars, euros) if they believe that their nominal currency has greater risk. For example, if a government is spending recklessly, there is serious risk of inflation. Or, if the government has forced interest rates to be too low (well below inflation), then people want to hedge against that too.

By forbidding the ownership of hard currency, the government forces individuals to use the local currency. They must save in this currency, which drives down interest rates and provides cheap capital to their government. And it prevents (for a short time) exchange rates from significantly changing, because it effectively limits the supply of the local currency and reduces demand for hard currency.

EDIT: I forgot to mention the other reason governments do this - it's a great way to force the people to bear the burden of paying down national debt. If the country has significant debt, then the bureaucratic elite have a huge incentive to pursue a policy of inflation, so that the debt becomes less burdensome over time. This well written article from The Economist explains how the west used this technique in the post-ww2 era: http://www.economist.com/node/18834259?story_id=18834259

> force the people to bear the burden of paying down national debt

Unless they default, aren't the people going to have to pay down the national debt one way or another? The only real question is what mechanism to use, and which part of the population pays how much, since there are different winners or losers depending on what method you pursue (e.g. inflating it away, vs. paying it out of tax revenue).

Argentina has direct elections of the president, multiple political parties, and mandatory voting. How does that make them a "non-free country"? If anything that makes Argentines more free than citizen of the United States.

Also what is your criteria for a hard currency vs a soft currency? It seems weird to group the US Dollar and Euro with gold and put the Argentine Peso in a separate group.

A hard currency is a globally traded currency expected to serve as a reliable store of value. The Argentine peso isn't widely enough traded, not to mention subject to devaluation, to even remotely qualify as a hard currency.

I won't consider mandatory voting, someone forcing you to vote, freedom at all.

I was in Argentina the last election, I saw buses of poor people that were given bocadillos and $10 with instructions of who they should vote.

Argentina is going downhill. I know, I have family there.

I think you can't differentiate between political theory and realpolitik. Having elections don't make a country free. We can argue infinitely about the same on other places but Argentina has a long history of constraining individual freedom and policies against productive companies

All the economic talk these days is about Greece and Spain, but Argentina seems to be on its knees economically based on the kind of measures they've pursued as of late.

A few months ago, they deployed cash-sniffing dogs in airports to prevent people from bringing large amounts of money out of the country. Yes, cash-sniffing dogs. They have a tax evasion rate of around 40%, and they routinely lie about economic statistics and go after watchdog groups that try to publish the real numbers.

I'm not sure how long that can last as a national economic policy.

Sources: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/que-pa... http://www.economist.com/node/21548242

Meanwhile, the president says "we're resisting while the world collapses on top of us", so many lies.

This is not new, it's been almost impossible to buy dollars since last november, but it has been made official just recently.

The problem with this ban is that there are really no ways to save money here, unless you have a significant amount of capital to buy a house or apartment. What are we salaried workers supposed to do with the percentage of our monthly income that we can save? The only alternative seems the black market, or spending everything in things you might need in the next few months but with no real resale value.

With a 25% inflation rate, saving in pesos equals losing money. What can we do?

Prohibited from saving in dollars through official channels, Argentines will turn to whatever other choices they have: black-market dollars, precious metals like gold, and (I would expect) even alternative currencies like Bitcoin.[1]

[1] http://cs702.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/on-the-potential-adopt...

This strategy has been tried way too many times before. It never worked and you can tell it is the beginning of a new debacle.

Stuff like this makes me glad that I left the country.

Is this stuff still going on in the world? I thought that such rules died with the fall of east European regimes around 1990. Well, I'm glad I can open a savings account in all major world currencies (at the moment, following currencies are possible at my bank: CHF, GBP, USD, AUD, CAD, DKK, NOK, SEK, JPY and of course EUR, which is official currency). More, it's possible to mix different currencies in one account.

The North Koreans did something similar a couple of years ago: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8394987.stm

Correct, and all those currencies float. Guess in what direction? Down. Have a look at 'Currency Wars' and see how all country's drive down the value of their currency in order to export more easily. As they do, paying off debt becomes easier. However, for people that actually save money (or who are on fixed income like pensioners) it means their purchasing power becomes much smaller. Link to Currency Wars: http://www.amazon.com/Currency-Wars-Making-Global-Portfolio/...

The problem is always this: what can I buy with the money I have? If all major currencies (including home currency) float down, then I don't lose very much. However, if my home currency loses 10% or more per month relative to other currencies, then I would very much like to have access to foreign currency. This was true 30 years ago in my country and this is probably true in Argentina today.

"If all major currencies (including home currency) float down, then I don't lose very much."

That's not true -- they're all floating down relative to actual goods and services.

Coordinated devaluation prevents massive capital flight from country to country, but only by making things suck equally everywhere.

Yes, I understand that. But the process is slow. Hyperinflation in some countries was/is much, much worse than regular inflation in developed countries.

The problem with them all moving down is that it affects the value of your savings. At the same time the fact that they are all moving down is supposed to make investing them in things that creates or retains value more attractive.

This happens in Venezuela since 10 years ago and it has been proved to be a very bad idea.

However, this is should not be in HN. This kind of politics articles just brings undesired controversy.

I disagree. I wandered into the comments just to find out what would happen, or what this means to, the market and Argentinians in general.

The results and comments are entirely predictable. It's not good news for your average person in Argentina.

Isn't it obvious?

The US banned using foreign coins in the mid 19th century as a misguided attempt to bolster patriotism. Americans routinely used Spanish coins in private transactions up until this point. I think (don't entirely remember if) part of the reason was to encourage the use of US silver coins which had been driven out of circulation due to the US government overvaluing gold relative to silver. The basic problem was that by having the US dollar fixed to two exchange rates that one was always being driven out of circulation as the exchange rate changed. This lead to the free silver movement and the Populists getting excited about seeing only silver used to back dollars.

This is a misguided attempt to trap people into their own crappy currency. The US currency isn't any better fundamentally but as of now we don't force citizens to hold dollars for savings.

This is one of a couple moves by the Argentinian government that slows down tech innovation and development.

You neither can import any electronics (or anything at all, except you also export for an equivalent amount). So you're stuck with what the government held companies provide.

Sadly, yep... that's true. I recently moved back to Argentina from Spain, and for example they just released the Samsung Galaxy S II, and it's really expensive.

Don't even think of buying a Tablet, Phone or whatever, you just can't.

Plus, they want us to buy the shitty laptops/netbooks that are manufactured here in Argentina, like Bangho for example, I think we also produce Lenovo, but I like them.

Not to mention we also have restrictions importing books... yes, books!

I'm very curious why you would want to move to Argentina. I've just read a blog from a guy (Ferfal) about moving out of Argentina because of all the violence, repression and hardship. 'Surviving Argentina' He predicted this news as well. http://ferfal.blogspot.nl/search/label/Argentine%20Collapse

"They investigated your finances if you bought a big screen TV for the world cup or send your kids to a private school. In a way they “nationalized” and ruined private health care by including every crappy social medical plan into private health care services that used to be of acceptable quality. They banned the purchase of foreign currency, pretty much froze importations even taking a Fahrenheit 451 twist when they banned the importation of books, like a poor taste Bradburian joke.

No one saw this coming? Really? Hey, those guys that said Argentina was great for expats and that expropriation wasn’t a risk, I suppose they crawled back under a rock in Salta or somewhere."

Is Spain in such a terrible state that Argentina looks better? Any thoughts?

A friend of mine recently moved from California to Argentins to be with a guy (sigh). It is even worse because she is ethnically Chinese, so people see her on the street and assume she works in a laundry, when in fact she is a PhD holding research scientist and manager at a Fortune 50.

Unless you have weird ties to Argentina like this, it seems irrational to move there.

"Is Spain in such a terrible state that Argentina looks better? "

I have a friend that is from Argentina and says "And you call this "crysis"?" referring to Spain, where he lives.

In Spain things are not that bad, yet. Spain is over indebted, so is USA.

I moved to Argentina because my parents moved, I'm not 18 yet. Basically my father has more job here.

I plan to move maybe... not sure where, things can change in some years.

This has always been the rule in Brazil. In Uruguay you can open an account in pesos, dollars, or euros (but it is a very small country that depends on banking, like the swiss). Are there other countries where you can open an account with a foreign currency?

I believe it's the rule in the U.S. as well; deposit accounts must be in dollars. Several American banks offer business accounts that let you maintain multiple currencies, but they do so by storing (on paper) the other currencies in the care of a foreign branch (see the asterisk note at the bottom of Wells Fargo's info: https://www.wellsfargo.com/com/international/businesses/acco...).

It's not the rule in the U.S. that deposits must be in dollars. (Most banks will let you open up foreign-currency accounts...they just charge more. A lot more.)

However, foreign currency-denominated accounts are subject to yearly gain/loss recognition as the value of the foreign currency changes compared to the dollar. This could potentially trigger income taxes on the unrealized gain, effectively (and usually) reducing or eliminating any interest earned. It's also a PITA for banks to deal with the compliance paperwork.

You can open dollar and euro accounts in the UK. Don't know if it gets any more niche than that (aside from being able to open accounts in £ ;).

In Poland you can easily open an account in USD and EUR in pretty much every major bank, even virtual ones. CHF and GBP are also popular. There are no special requirements, but wire transfers not in PLN tend be much more expensive (though there are limits on costs of transfers in EUR within EU).

In the US, Everbank offers accounts in several currencies.

You can open US dollar accounts in Canada.

Seems like Cristina wants to follow the venezuelan model. At least they have some real internal production, not like Venezuela where the only thing we produce is oil and everything has to be imported at black market dollar rates.

Ultra high inflation, here we go!

I'm not always in favor of what Christina does, but it is generally good to have a diversity of economic models active in the world, for the same reason biodiversity is important.

While most of the world struggled with the 2008 economic crisis - and Europe still struggles with it - Argentina shrugged it off.

Imagine if another longer lasting crisis occurs within the US hegemonic sphere. Countries like Argentina, which have one foot outside that sphere, will be able to survive and perhaps even lead growth elsewhere.

Life times of economic crises in Argentina have taught Argentines to depend on no one but themselves, which means protectionism sometimes.

We shrugged it off because soy prices are at a record high and the state gets huge amounts of cash from those exports. Living and dying by the sword of commodities prices is not progress.

Argentina is applying the same model every time! Just when the country is growing it is not about the model but about International conditions (commodities prices increasing 2x)

Funny how nevertheless many people promote Argentina as a model for Greece.

A great model of what would happen if they go with the seemingly easy way out.

http://www.cavallo.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Greece-...

This is one reason why Bitcoin can be useful. Maybe this will lead to additional Bitcoin adoption in Argentina.

And why is this on HN ?

Because of the opportunity to promote Bitcoins.

HN isn't only for tech articles. It's for articles that may interest the tech community. You'll often find posts on politics, finance, and other obscure topics as well.

The guidelines indicate that most political articles are off topic:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. it's probably off-topic.

Political articles really should not be here: it's a poisonous topic that, on a site like this, usually just rehashes the same old things, which makes them not particularly 'gratifying of one's intellectual curiosity'.

This article isn't really obscure, it appeared on Bloomberg.com, and the Argentinean government fooling around with foreign exchange, banks, and statistics is not really news either.

An example of an article that I think would be more in the spirit of hacker news might be something about options trading evolving between medieval Florence and Flanders, or something like that...

I'm not trying to be argumentative here, but in my view, the article isn't just 'political'. With currency and money involved, there is an 'economic' angle that I, personally, want to learn about. And with a government being involved, there are moral/philosophical issues that I, personally, want to learn about. So for me, this article gratifies my intellectual curiosity.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the link may seem off-topic to you, but it's highly relevant to me. And there's nothing wrong with any of that. And of course, just because an article shows up here doesn't mean you have to read it :)

The front page is a zero-sum game. Every article that appears does so at the expense of another article. The articles that appear on the front page get the most comments, which drive the community.

I'm not arguing against this article, nor am I arguing that all articles on the front page should appeal to me. However, I am arguing that your final line of reasoning does not hold in general.

I disagree that the front page is a zero-sum game. A front page filled with good variety has more value than a front page filled with repetitive articles on the same basic subjects. Whether this particular article is good variety or not is beyond what I'm willing to address, but I don't think it's correct to describe the front page as a zero-sum game, and too much conformity can be harmful.

I think you're correct that I misused "zero-sum," since the utility of the front page is not always the same; it can increase or decrease based on the quality of the articles. I incorrectly used it to describe a situation where the gain for one is the loss of another, which is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a zero-sum game.

Regarding your point, I think we're dangerously veering into platitudes. Of course I agree that a front page with "good" variety is better than a page with "repetitive" articles. And of course I agree that "too much conformity" is a bad thing. But I was originally countering the commonly spoken notion "If you don't like it, don't read it!" Because of the gain-for-one-is-loss-for-another nature of the front page, exactly what appears on the front page drives the community. If too many off-topic posts become the norm, HN will become a general interest site, and lose the community that makes it so valuable.

edit: There is zero reason to downvote mikeash. I tried to correct with an upvote of my own, but apparently at least two HN readers are mistaken.

That makes me wonder about what the economics of having a dynamic number of articles in the front page instead of the fixed 30 would look like.

This isn't exactly advanced economics though - it's the kind of thing you can easily learn about by reading actual books, rather than an article with a scant few paragraphs. A subscription to The Economist, even if it's current events, rather than economics, will also get you way more articles like it, but with more detail.

And your "moral and philosophical" discussions are exactly the sort of thing that turns into flame wars. I'm 100% sure there are people on HN who think, for instance, that taxes are immoral. Others are for high taxes, especially on the wealthy. Do we really need to get into that? Do you think anyone will emerge with their point of view radically shifted?

The argentine peso inflates very rapidly, then the government slashes zeros off the end of the money. Why on earth would I work hard to exchange toil for receipts that don't hold their claim on human labor? If people convert the peso to the dollar then they can store wealth. What kind of monster forces people to store labor in recipts made up in diappearing ink? Isn't that watered down slavery? To toil and be unable to save any excess for later? Its a fate worse than death for me.

I'd ask you the inverse question. What monster keeps inflation so low as to make it impossible for regular people to earn anything on modest savings, yet provides a powerful incentive for wealthy individuals and corporations to hoard capital.

Right now, people and small businesses are being starved of capital, because the folks with capital have no incentive to spend it.

Question: Do you think that Microsoft would make a business decision to park nearly $60,000,000,000 in cash if there were a 6% inflation rate?

Pragmatic versus right - if inflation were 6% (which isn't so bad as long as it isn't volatile) you would simply dump the dollars for euros or francs or renminbi and invest there. So yes, it would get the capital moving, but moving out.

Note that when Microsoft "parks" cash it's going into government bonds, commercial paper, and bank deposits, not a vault of cash.

> What monster keeps inflation so low as to make it impossible for regular people to earn anything on modest savings

How would higher inflation help savers earn more money? Seems like higher inflation would hurt savers, not help them.

Higher inflation would lead the central banks (who want lower levels of inflation) to raise interest rates in order to control inflation.

We've been living with nearly 5 years of historically low rates of interest and inflation due to fiscal stimulus measures. The nasty side effect of that is that it is nearly risk-free for people with surplus capital to hold onto that capital.

Generally speaking, high inflation is bad for savers. But virtually no inflation is also bad for savers, as you get no return investment without incurring significant risk.

> Generally speaking, high inflation is bad for savers. But virtually no inflation is also bad for savers, as you get no return investment without incurring significant risk.

"safe investments" don't outpace inflation.

The only meaningful ROI accounts for inflation.

Fiat money implies inflation. Or you are so naive to think that there is no US dollar devaluation?

I'm Swiss and respectfully disagree.

The Swiss national bank has intervened repeatedly over the last year to devalue the franc. They do it for the same mercantilist reason that China does it: to subsidize export industries.

So even though Swiss consumers may not be seeing nominal price inflation, they are most definitely paying higher prices than they would have otherwise been paying if the SNB really maintained a hard currency.

I'm disagreeing that fiat money = inflation. The Swiss franc and price levels are stable thanks to intervention - else we'd be seeing debilitating deflation.

The kind of "monster" that wants the country as a whole to survive, not just the few lucky ones that can "store wealth".

These monsters should then vote for someone with economic sense, not the clusterfuck of idiots that you've been putting in power since the 1940's.

Storing "wealth" is by many regarded as the most promising way for people out of poverty.

If you can't store wealth, how are you supposed to buy something like a house if the only way you could do it is by saving for many years?

Blatant advertisement: start your local bitcoin exchange today, escape the tyranny! http://localbitcoins.com/cash_exchange_howto ;)

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