En Argentine, le troc ça coince

[Rémy]

Voila l'Argentine presque revenue au troc. Un bel exemple de l'importance de la monnaie… et de la non nécessité des banques pour son apparition.

http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/20…#ens_id=1026081

Les astuces des Argentins, face à la pénurie de monnaie

LE MONDE | 21.03.08 | 15h41 • Mis à jour le 21.03.08 | 15h41

BUENOS AIRES CORRESPONDANTE

"Un hot dog et un Coca-Cola gratuits si vous avez 50 pesos en pièces de monnaie" : la pancarte d'une supérette, les fameux quioscos des trottoirs de Buenos Aires, illustre la pénurie de monnaie qui frappe l'Argentine. Les pièces d'un peso ou de 50, 25, 10 et 5 centimes sont devenues des denrées rares.

Un sujet d'inquiétude, surtout pour voyager en autobus ou en train, car les machines n'acceptent pas les billets. "C'est une odyssée", se désespère Maria, une étudiante qui va de quiosco en quiosco achetant n'importe quoi dans l'espoir de réunir les 90 centimes de son ticket de bus. Mais faute de pièces, il est courant que l'on vous rende des bonbons en guise de monnaie.

Certains commerçants préfèrent perdre la vente si le client ne fait pas l'appoint. D'autres, plus généreux, arrondissent les prix. Les responsables du métro doivent parfois laisser passer les voyageurs sans les faire payer.

"Je suis entré dans une pharmacie pour acheter de l'aspirine et me procurer quelques pièces, cela oblige à consommer inutilement", ronchonne un avocat. Plus créatif, Dario, un chauffeur de taxi, donne chaque matin un billet de 20 pesos (environ 4 euros) à de jeunes mendiants. A la fin de la journée, il récupère l'équivalent en pièces de monnaie.

Les banques refusent souvent de collaborer. Elles ont pourtant reçu l'ordre de changer les billets de 100 pesos, sous peine d'une amende de 100 000 pesos. La banque centrale affirme avoir mis en circulation, depuis janvier, 250 millions de pièces via les supermarchés et les postes de péage. Le gouvernement assure qu'il y a 4,5 milliards de pièces de monnaie en circulation, ce qui est jugé suffisant pour une population de 40 millions d'habitants.

Diverses explications circulent à Buenos Aires. Depuis la dévaluation du peso, la valeur du métal qui sert à fabriquer les pièces est supérieure à celle de la monnaie. Des mafias fondraient les pièces pour les revendre sous forme de lingots de cuivre et de nickel. "Des responsables de lignes d'autobus viennent nous revendre leur monnaie, mais contre un billet de 100 pesos, ils ne nous donnent que 95 pesos en pièces", dénoncent des commerçants. "C'est la seule option pour ne pas être réduits à rendre la monnaie avec des bonbons", soupire Eduardo Medaglia, président de l'Union argentine des quioscos.

Christine Legrand

[Invité jabial]

Hin hin hin

[xiii]

Certains pays sud-américains font peur ! Ils sont la preuve que certains peuples sont tellement têtus qu'en dépit du bon sens ils persistent dans l'interventionnisme et que les multiples crises précédentes ne leur ont pas servi de leçon. Je crois que la France est de cette trempe et que même en faillite les gens resterons de fieffés socialos.

Pour revenir à la monnaie, pensez vous que la large diffusion d'un système tel que la future carte bleue qui sera sans contact + porte monnaire electronique avec les terminaux adéquats; permettrait d'attenuer ce genre de problème ? (Question générale bien entendu, car c'est pas demain la veille qu'en Argentine ce système pourra être généralisé).

[A.B.]

Par ailleurs il y a des révoltes en Argentine en ce moment du fait de la pénurie de nourriture (inflation + contrôle des prix… won't they ever learn)

[José]

Par ailleurs il y a des révoltes en Argentine en ce moment du fait de la pénurie de nourriture (inflation + contrôle des prix… won't they ever learn)

Plus exactement, la pénurie de nourriture qui se déclare actuellement en Argentine est due à une grève des campagnes qui dure depuis plus de deux semaines. En effet, la politique des fascistes (ce qu'est stricto sensu le péronisme) qui gouvernent l'Argentine est de favoriser démagogiquement sa base populaire des villes au détriment des campagnes avec des prix des biens alimentaires autoritairement maintenus à la baisse, des interdictions d'exportation, une imposition démesurée des propriétaires fonciers, etc. Ce à quoi nous assistons actuellement, c'est à la révolte des campagnes. Le caractère fasciste des péronistes a encore été démontré mardi soir, lorsque les chemises noires du gouvernement (matons des syndicats alliés aux péronistes) ont agressés des manifestants qui défilaient dans le centre de Buenos-Aires contre la politique du gouvernement envers les campagnes (nombreux étaient les manifestants portaient des t-shirts où étaient inscrits "Cristina [la présidente argentine], je n'ai pas de champs mais tu ne voleras pas en mon nom.")

[Sous-Commandant Marco]

Hé hé, j'avais prévu cette inflation il y a au moins deux ans.

[Rémy]

Ca rappelle la politique mise en place par Lénine face aux grands propriétaires fonciers : il a mobilisé des détachements de citadins affamés à aller dans les campagnes réquisitionner les céréales en 1918.

[José]

Argentina's taxes on food exports

Killing the pampas's golden calf

Mar 27th 2008

From The Economist print edition

A contender for the dottiest tax around—and its use is spreading

FEW countries are as blessed by nature as Argentina. Plant wheat or soyabeans in the fertile pampas and they will produce bounteous crops. Turn a cow loose and you will have some of the world's best beef. So at least goes the stereotype. In fact, Argentine farmers are among the world's most nimble and efficient. They need to be: few countries have been as badly governed as Argentina. Over the past 70 years it has often been the farmers and their exports that have rescued the economy only to see populist governments in Buenos Aires plunder the Pampas to placate their urban voters.

That pattern is repeating itself. This week Argentina's farmers have been blocking roads in protest at what they see as a punitive rise in a tax on their exports. With world prices for wheat and soyabeans at record levels, Argentina's president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, reckons that the farmers ought to share their windfall with the rest of the country. And the idea is catching. With stocks of some staple foods suddenly in short supply, governments around the world are slapping taxes or quotas on agricultural exports in the hope that this will stop prices from rising at home.

Virtually every tariff is a little piece of economic madness; but one aimed at hobbling your best exporters would seem to take the galleta. Like many crazy ideas, it began as a temporary (and not wholly mad) scheme. In 2002 Argentina was felled by financial collapse, debt default and a massive currency devaluation. Half the population descended into poverty and unemployment reached 21%. But exporting farmers received a windfall from devaluation, augmented when world prices for farm commodities promptly began to rise. So the government imposed export taxes, initially of 20% or so. As an emergency measure this could be justified on two grounds. First, it discouraged farmers from leaving the local market unsupplied, which would have pushed prices up for newly impoverished urbanites. Second, it contributed to a fiscal surplus, helping the government stabilise the economy.

Gauchos grilled

With farm exports growing regardless of the taxes, Argentina bounced back strongly. But instead of getting rid of the taxes, Néstor Kirchner, Ms Fernández's predecessor and husband, intensified them. He even banned beef exports for six months, wrecking years of patient brand- and market-building abroad and encouraging farmers to switch to crops. His public-spending binge has turned robust economic recovery into wild overheating. Inflation is eating into urban incomes and exporters' competitiveness. At their new punitive levels of up to 40%, the export taxes are likely to trigger a decline in farm output and, eventually, a fresh balance-of-payments crisis. And if prices fall, farmers will be in a poor shape to cope.

All this applies even more in other countries with less efficient farmers than Argentina and without the excuse of its recent social emergency. If they curb food exports, governments may buy short-term relief for consumers—but at the cost of lowering output and domestic incomes and switching resources into producing other things. It is the political equivalent of a gaucho lassoing himself with his own bolas.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayst…ory_id=10925509

The Kirchners v the farmers

Mar 27th 2008 | BUENOS AIRES

From The Economist print edition

The countryside's beef about export taxes becomes the new government's first political test

CLANK, clunk, clank, clunk. The sound of a cacerolazo—Argentina's signature style of protest, in which people pour into the streets banging pots and pans—had not been heard in Buenos Aires since the depths of the country's economic collapse in 2002. Yet on March 25th, after five years of breakneck economic growth that has left the slump a distant memory, the steady clanging of kitchenware returned to Argentina's main cities.

The target was the country's president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Barely three months after taking office, she has provoked a conflict with Argentina's farmers which has blossomed into her government's first real domestic political test. Ms Fernández was elected last year only after her husband, Néstor Kirchner, chose not to stand for a second term. To support her campaign, Mr Kirchner ramped up spending on pensions and public works. The new government is seeking to restore the fiscal surplus to rein in the resulting inflation. So it has raised the already steep export taxes it levies on most agricultural commodities. The rate on soyabeans, to take the most extreme example, has been hoisted to 40%, up from 27% last year.

Argentina's farmers have hit back with a campaign of strikes and roadblocks across the country. They launched similar protests under Mr Kirchner. But this time they seem more determined. They have vowed to continue until the taxes are cut. Some foodstuffs are running short: the meat racks in one supermarket in Palermo, a fashionable neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, are all but bare.

The government has refused to negotiate while the strike continues. “I won't give in to extortion,” Ms Fernández said in a speech this week. Comparing the farmers' protest to those during the economic collapse, she added: “In 2001, there were roadblocks of misery. This last weekend we saw the other side, roadblocks of plenty.” That prompted some 10,000 pot-banging protestors to descend on the Plaza de Mayo, the square in front of the presidential palace, with smaller demonstrations popping up across the country.

Resolving the dispute will not be easy. Farmers' leaders say they cannot afford to back down. Because the government charges income tax on top of the export levies, around 44% of the revenues from soyabean sales will now wind up in the state's coffers. Planting, harvest, transport and the cost of land eat up another 50%, leaving just six cents on the dollar in profits, farmers say. For the many smaller-scale farmers the tax rise means a big drop in their income; if crops fail, some would go out of business.

Moreover, because of high soyabean prices, vast tracts of land in the country's north-east that were traditionally unused have been brought into cultivation in recent years. The tax rise would lead to some 2m hectares (5m acres) being left idle next year, reckons Pablo Adreani, an agricultural consultant. Some producers are already cutting back: Alexis de Noailles, who runs Rincón de Chillar, a large farming company, says the new policy caused him to stop work on a new milk factory, costing ten families their jobs.

But it is hard for Ms Fernández to climb down. Her Peronist movement has long demonised the farming industry as a relic of Argentina's oligarchical past. She is relying on fiscal policy to restrain inflation: her central banker, Martín Redrado, says that monetary policy has little impact in Argentina, since bank credit has yet to rebound much since disappearing in 2001.

That points to stalemate. Ms Fernández has unleashed a more formidable opposition than her husband ever faced: an impromptu alliance between the farmers and the urban middle class. Some previously loyal provincial officials are rebelling: the governor of Córdoba province urged the president to start talks. Yet the Kirchners' political grip on the populous poorer suburbs of Buenos Aires remains as strong as ever. Sympathy for the farmers could quickly fray if the conflict drags on. Argentines lead the world in beef consumption, and they would not appreciate a long interruption of their traditional asado barbecues.

Farmers insist that the government has left them with no choice. Mr de Noailles predicts that the farmers are capable of leaving the cities without meat for up to two months. “It's tough to say how people will react,” he says. “Will they say it's our fault or the government's? But you can't ruin people's lives like this. If they don't back down, Buenos Aires will starve.”

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayst…ory_id=10925670