“All I can suggest is that if you don’t like it, you visit Russia or Argentina or any number of other Fedless countries whose money was rendered worthless by hyperinflation”
Please explain…
“Central Bank of Argentina - Wikipedia”
“Central Bank of Russia - Wikipedia”
Don’t shake my faith, straightdope…
What gives?
Hello, and welcome to the SDMB. Usually, when starting a thread about one of Cecil’s columns or a Staff Report, it’s a good idea to include a link to the original column. This helps keep everyone on the same page. Just copy and paste thr url into thr reply box, like this: Who owns the Federal Reserve? - The Straight Dope
Onto your actual question. At the time of the late 90’s-early 2000’s financial crisis, the Argentine Central Bank did not operate in the same way as the Federal Reserve of the US. According to The bank’s own website:
Additionally, the crisis caused the collapse of the tools the BRCA used, so effectively during the crisis it ceased functioning.
Cecils’s comment about Russia refers to the hyperinflation that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the imposition of so-called “shock therapy” attempt to quickly transform the planned state-driven economy into a capitalist one. At this time the Central Bank or Russia was not operating as an independent Fed-like organization, but a political one following Parliament’s orders.
Nowadays Zimbabwe is the example of hyperinflation ne plus ultra: Zimbabwean dollar - Wikipedia
From that article:
The most interesting news item out of Argentina at the time was the food riots. They started because the grocery stores gave up trying to reprice items, and instead stationed pricers at the check-out, to reprice items as they reach the cashier.
The joke was, which is cheaper - cab ride or bus? A: cab ride, because you don’t have to pay until the end of the ride when you money is worth much less.
A geologist once gave a talk at our company about visiting Russia during the hyper-inflation. People were paid each day at noon (cash) and would run out and convert that cash into anything they could buy, since the cash would soon be worth less. At night, they would be standing at the subway stops holding up what they’d bought, looking to trade with others.
He went to a remote mining town; most of the apartments and other buildings were built pilings over the permafrost, so the basement areas were turned into huge swap markets. You could buy almost anything you could want there, including women and children (sad, sick) but he couldn’t find any orange juice for his interpreter’s sick son no matter how much he had in US dollars.