Paypal Users In Argentina Can No Longer Make Domestic Transactions

another random user writes with this excerpt from the BBC: "The online payment service said that from 9 October: 'Argentina resident Paypal-users may only send and receive international payments.' Last year the Argentine government announced restrictions on the purchase of U.S. dollars. It has led to an increase in currency sales on the black market — but Paypal's exchange rates are better. Locals were setting up two accounts under different email addresses and transferring money between the two, exchanging local currency pesos for dollars in the process."

Re:Just wait

[AK Marc]

Or 3 under Mitt.

Re:Never works, does it

[bmo]

>The UK had both price fixing and rationing in WW2, and we lost to the United States, which didn't.

What? Are you bloody serious?

http://www.ameshistoricalsociety.org/exhibits/events/rationing.htm [ameshistor...ociety.org]

First google link, out of thousands.

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BMO

Re:Never works, does it

[bmo]

Furthermore

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Price_Administration [wikipedia.org]

President Franklin D. Roosevelt revived the Advisory Commission to World War I Council on National Defense on May 29, 1940, to include Price Stabilization and Consumer Protection Divisions. Both divisions merged to become the Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply (OPACS) within the Office for Emergency Management by Executive Order 8734, April 11, 1941. Civil supply functions were transferred to the Office of Production Management.

It became an independent agency under the Emergency Price Control Act, January 30, 1942. The OPA had the power to place ceilings on all prices except agricultural commodities, and to ration scarce supplies of other items, including tires, automobiles, shoes, nylon, sugar, gasoline, fuel oil, coffee, meats and processed foods. At the peak, almost 90% of retail food prices were frozen. It could also authorize subsidies for production of some of those commodities.

Facts are inconvenient for some.

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BMO

Re:Government fighting the market

[Anonymous Coward]

Inflation is 11-15% in America? This is completely incorrect, inflation has never even gone above 6% in any given month/year since 1990. Inflation is also not "money printing", it is the value you lose in buying power on your currency per year. Inflation rates recently have been very low. Check the inflation calculator [bls.gov] for yourself. How did this get modded +5?

Re:A word to the wise

[Anonymous Coward]

"Smart people are realizing that socialist policies are going to bring high inflation as they always do and wipe away people's life savings"

Otoh, informed people know it was capitalist/neoliberal IMF policies that wiped away people's life savings and ruined Argentine's economy, and that it has since recovered under 'socialist' policies.

Re:A word to the wise

[pla]

realize politics isn't a fucking sporting event between two teams

Except, it kinda does work that way.

Most people just have the teams wrong - Not red vs blue, not plebes vs silver-spoons, but rather "all of us" vs "anyone who runs for public office".

Oddly, despite having the bigger team, we usually lose.

Re:A word to the wise

[Xest]

I don't even recall any of the bankers themselves losing their jobs really. It was all the support staff that suffered like IT, admin, and customer facing branch staff. In this respect, and as the investment banks and customer facing banks are often different sub-companies, I'm not even sure people from investment arms of banks really paid a price at all for the most part.

Also, a year later, they were all getting hefty bonuses again to boot.

Re:Beef

[Anonymous Coward]

Provided the land has not been bought up by US business, which I suspect is the case.

http://www.propertywire.com/news/south-america/argentina-limits-foreign-buyers-201112195891.html

Stop posting. You are constantly wrong, and the few times you've attempted to support yourself with a citation you've given links which flat out contradict you.

Its draconian

[Anonymous Coward]

Our goverment thinks that because they got 54% last elections, they have absolut control. Having more than 54% means they have quorum in the senate, they can move forward anything our president want. That also means that they don't have to explain anything to anyone. They subsidize poverty (if you worked all your life and you got fired, you are screwed. But if you are poor and don't have a job, you will get money. And more money for each of your sons), so (most) poor people don't want to work anymore. All hard workers from medium class know that our currency can't be trust when hard times comes (anyone here remembers about 'corralito'?), but out gov't is taking away that too, and hyper-controlling everything you do so they can collect more taxes.
Now, there are few media groups that are not aligned with the gov't, they are having problems as well. One of the biggest media groups (group Clarin) is about to be disarmed next Dec 7. And the gov't spend a LOT of money in official media and propaganda to tell the 'official' story (like there is no inflation, there is no insecurity, there is no poverty, there is no unemployment)

Next presidential elextions will ocurr in 2015, we still have a long way ahead...

Re:Government fighting the market

[Overzeetop]

You do know that inflation is set by the CPI, which is (wait for it) a basket of commodity prices. The basket contents change periodically, but are relatively stable. If inflation were going up 11-15% per year, I would have seen my real purchasing power go down by half in the past 6 years, and yet it hasn't been anywhere close to that. Most of the stuff I buy is probably averaging 20% higher than it was 5-6 years ago which is (surprise!) about 3.5%. If you just look at gold and gasoline, you're going to get a mighty skewed picture of what "inflation" is.

Now, if you want to talk about the purchasing power of the dollar against some foreign currencies - sure, the dollar has lost ground. I remember a dollar north of 200yen (in the 80s) and at parity with the British pound. Then again, looking over the mid term, the Euro was introduced at $1.25, fairly quickly dropped, then gained ground in the 2000s, peaking during the US financial crisis and when the congress was staring at default, and has settled back to $1.30.

(BTW - I have an old friend who does work on the CPI and PPI, and I can tell you without a doubt that there is no collusion or conspiracy going on. You're welcome to argue what "inflation" means, but I promise they are not cooking the books)

Re:I'm in Buenos Aires

[PPalmgren]

As a result, companies like mine are averse to doing business there as well. We do have a location down there, but we wrk in a high expense fixed asset industry. There's a predominant fear that they might de-privatize our industry and force us out, leaving us holding the bag on a multi-hundred million dollar investment. As such, we have to charge according to the risk. Its like a vicious cycle, we charge because of the volatility, they react to those prices and be more volatile.