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Page added on February 4, 2013
Argentina orders supermarkets to freeze all prices
Argentina announced a two-month price freeze on supermarket products Monday in an effort to break spiraling inflation.
The price freeze applies to every product in all of the nation’s largest supermarkets — a group including Walmart, Carrefour, Coto, Jumbo, Disco and other large chains. The companies’ trade group, representing 70 percent of the Argentine market, reached the accord with Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno, the government’s news agency Telam reported.
The commerce ministry wants consumers to keep receipts and complain to a hotline about any price hikes they see before April 1.
Polls show Argentines worry most about inflation, which private economists estimate could reach 30 percent this year. The government says it’s trying to hold the next union wage hikes to 20 percent, a figure that suggests how little anyone believes the official index that pegs annual inflation at just 10 percent.
The government announced the price freeze on the first business day after the International Monetary Fund formally censured Argentina for putting out inaccurate economic data. The IMF has given Argentina until September to bring its statistics up to international standards, or face expulsion from the world body in November.
President Cristina Fernandez and her economy minister, Hernan Lorenzino, responded over the weekend with a flurry of attacks on the IMF, saying the agency’s data-gathering efforts had lost credibility in the lead-up to Argentina’s historic 2001 debt default. They said IMF advice is leading Europeans astray by favoring big banks over measures that can grow economies out of crisis.
However, Lorenzino also said that the government will begin using a new inflation index starting in fourth-quarter 2013 — just in time for the IMF’s decision.
4 Comments on "Argentina orders supermarkets to freeze all prices"
Plantagenet on Mon, 4th Feb 2013 8:37 pm
Looks like those clever socialists in Argentina have solved the food inflation problem—-next they’ll have to solve the food shortage problems and the food black market problems they just created by freezing food prices.
BillT on Tue, 5th Feb 2013 1:01 am
Planet, all of that is coming to the town near you soon. Be patient.
“… the International Monetary Fund formally censured Argentina for putting out inaccurate economic data …”
WOW! When is it going to censure the US for the Bull Shit it puts out as reality? Oh, that’s right, the IMF is owned by the Empire. They only go after 3rd world countries, not the instigators.
GregT on Tue, 5th Feb 2013 5:13 am
There is a very good video on the collapse of Argentina in 2000.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH6_i8zuffs
Many people believe that Argentina was a practice run for what is being done to Europe today, and what is in store for the US shortly. The same multinational corporations and banking cartels are behind the scenes in all scenarios, and are using the same tactics.
Add climate change and peak oil on top of this, and “Houston, we have a problem”.
BillT,
When confidence in the US dollar really starts to gain traction, you can bet that “they” will do the same to the US. Most of their capital has already been moved offshore.
GregT on Tue, 5th Feb 2013 9:06 pm
Oops……….Loss of confidence.