As inflation in Argentina skyrockets, everyone is poorer

Buenos Aires, Argentina — After Ivana Roa lost her job a few years ago as a manager at an energy company, she went back to school to study law and economics with the aim of building a new career and income. “Imagine how sad that is — that in a country with good public education, and a free health care system, you have to consider leaving because you feel you don’t have a future.” With inflation running at 64 percent in the past twelve months and consulting firms forecasting it could hit 90 percent by the end of the year, the prognosis is grim in the third most populous country in South America. “Argentina needs to avoid a further spiral.” “It has to lower the fiscal deficit, emit much less currency, and partially increase the interest rates to incentivise savings in pesos,” he said. They use it to buy food, or they buy US dollars.” ‘Under the line of poverty’ Karina, 43, sees that tendency first hand from the streets of Buenos Aires’s Microcentro, where people like herself work on behalf of underground exchange houses, trying to entice prospective buyers or sellers of foreign currency. It’s more expensive to buy food, clothes, electronics.” Roberto Bereche said he tracks the rise and fall of the dollar exchange rate as a “hobby” — he cannot possibly afford to buy the currency now.