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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."
Game the system, pay the price...
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Transferring money from one of your own accounts to another, within the same country, is "money laundering and tax evasion" now?
"Money laundering and tax evasion" clearly is the "terrorism and cybercriminality" of the financial world, it is.
Or 3 under Mitt.
Learn to love Alaska
Governments used to be able to easily control currency flows because banks were needed to move money and for most people it was not easy to move small amounts. Now, with PayPa, for example, it's a lot easier to move a few hundred dollars across borders. How long is it before Argentineans with friends and relatives abroad "buy" things - effectively converting pesos into dollars and then have that person bring back dollars or keep them safely out of reach of the authorities? The authorities will have to setup ways to monitor online "sales" and collect taxes at the time of sale or tax PayPal transactions at the time of money transfer. Or, force PayPal to not do currency conversions. In the end, they will either have to give up, massively devalue the Peso or make it a non-convertablke currency.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The UK had both price fixing and rationing in WW2, and we lost to the United States, which didn't.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Too much of the Argentine economy consists of raising cheap beef for the US market. Most countries that are de facto producers for the US are screwed up. (And before you decide that is flamebait, go take a serious look at the CIA World Factbook.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
So people want to be able to buy something, government says: you can't. This always leads to black markets.
Inflation (money printing) in Argentina is high, their prices are going up 24% per year, which is the consequence of high inflation. Instead of stopping the inflation (stopping the money printing), the government wants to stop people from saving their purchasing power, however they do it. Apparently to the people of Argentina USD seem to be more attractive then their own currency.
In USA inflation is also high, 11-15%, but prices are not going up as quickly as in Argentina, because other countries are still willing to absorb the new dollars and exchange their goods for them, so prices are going up in other countries, who respond with their own inflation, they print their own currencies in response to USA printing and they are willing so far to exchange their own productivity (products they manufacture and make) for US dollars. This pushes prices up for those productive nations and this still acts as a price buffer for USA.
But look at this obvious response by government of Argentina: it's not that the government is plainly wrong in what it is doing, destroying the currency of the people.
The government says: it is the people, who are wrong for wanting to save their own savings, their purchasing power. Let's take the purchasing power away from the people. What it means is that the government wants to keep its high levels of spending but cannot or will not raise taxes, so it wants to steal from people. Printing money is theft of productivity and it's most obvious to the people when their prices go up.
Of-course very few people can understand the link between their prices going up and their government printing the currency, it's not a link that is necessarily very obvious directly to people, that's because people are not taught economics and the version of economics that they are taught is really not economics, it's propaganda that allows the government elite to keep people in check by denying them the real understanding of what is going on.
What is happening in Argentina is nothing new. Many countries did the same thing - printed money, set exchange controls, price controls, all it ever does is it creates black markets and very quickly creates very wide separation onto the poor and rich, even among people that maybe didn't have that huge of a separation before the gov't actions.
The newly printed money does not equal wealth. The amount of production stays the same (or it is decreased because people move their savings somewhere else and this means moving production somewhere else, so the country suffers decrease of productivity and increase of money supply), so the new money simply ends up bidding up prices for the existing assets and goods.
This is why inflation (money printing) hurts the poor much more than the wealthy, because the poor live on various fixed incomes, they are getting less and less with every check, be it a salary or a dividend or a pension check, whatever.
The wealthy end up bidding up prices for existing assets. Everything becomes a fight for a fixed or a decreasing pie, the pie is not growing. Only savings and production grows the pie, money printing destroys savings and productivity and re-allocates the pie from middle and poor to the top.
That's why there is a higher and higher wealth disparity, it's not because the 1% is stealing something, it's because the government is stealing something, the government is stealing purchasing power, it's destroying the savings, productivity, it's destroying the currency.
Of-course as people try to avoid their purchasing power from being destroyed by the government, the government sees this as something to be prevented, so it sets exchange controls, currency controls, wage and price controls. Minimum wage is just an attempt to hide levels of inflation, like many other things that gov't does it backfires and creates more unemployment and dependency and decreases productivity and standa
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Dear Sir
I am a successful Argentinian businessman who is in urgent need of your assistance. I have the sum of $10,000,000 equivalent in US Dollars which I need to transfer to an associate of mine in this country. Due to restrictive government policy, we require a 3rd party intermediary located outside the country. If you are willing to provide your services for this task, we will compensate you the sum of $5,000 USD. Please contact me as soon as possible, urgency is high in our minds to accomplish this transaction.
Our email address is: 9racdge82@mailvault.com
Sincerely,
Your Future Associates
this is why we need bitcoin or alikes, a currency without government regulation.
And you have half of your facts right.
Brazil has very much indeed left us behind. No doubt about that. But they have problems of their own too.
The behavior of the government here can be described as "random" at best, creating policies which have no clear benefit to anyone or purpose other than "someone, somewhere is stealing a lot of money with this... but I don't quite know how". It is very infuriating. They come out with blatant lies all the time, which has made the approval rating drop to what I imagine are single digits now. I say imagine since you can't trust any news outlets. I'd say something about that, but you americans have fox news, so we're relatively tame on that score. At least for now.
It's also sad that what used to be the "good" politicians are the ones now in office, corrupted beyond recognition. They got in basically by not being part of the US-slavish mafia that had been ruling for the last 20 years. But now they made up a mafia of their own, so that's not even a selling point anymore. It's nice that they don't just bow and take it in the ass 24/7 and lay the bill on us, but who cares if they still fuck us over even worse than before in many ways.
The opposing party is pretty much an open mafia, so there is really no other choice. If there were elections today, I couldn't vote honestly for anyone, unless votes were casted with bullets. I would vote for pretty much everybody then. Many times over.
Currency speculation is a human right!!! Everyone is entitled to exploit government-subsidized industries by endlessly converting currency in a way specifically prohibited by the government to support development of a healthy and safe development of economy!
Next, we should defend the right to steal and sell drugs from hospitals' emergency rooms!
</sarcasm>
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
You can always visit the fucking fauklands !! Oh, wait !! No you can't !! The Brits kicked your ass out of there !! Sheffield was a lucky shot !! Right then !! Carry on !!
everyone should be using bitcoins.
Economic freedom IS THE most fundamental freedom there is; without it, ALL other freedoms become comparatively trivial.
Really, I'm very scared. The government and some government related organizations are publicly destroying our freedoms little by little. It's not only about the economy, they're actually persecuting people and organizations that do not agree with their policies.
They're even imposing fines to private consulting companies that publish inflation percentages that do not match with the 'official' ones.
I just don't know what to do anymore.
The new policies basically screwed up a trip I've been planning for a year, doing extra hours at work and trying to save every argentine peso. It's not fair. And I was going to study, not to visit Disney Land.
I think the poster you responded to was describing the sick effects of inflation in general. They apply to *all* countries. Inflation fucked up Germany in the 20s and brought Hitler to power. Inflation fucked up most of Europe at that time. Dictators here and there.
Nowadays they call it "Quantitative Easing", as "Inflation" is of course a "bad" word. We are ruled by first-rate idiots. People who want to "smooth out" the economic cycle, people who cannot reign into the excesses and greed of the financial market players.
Actually the most sensible thing to do would be to nationalize all banks, limit the number of bankers and remove any bonus schemes. But I guess most Western politicos are fully in the pocket of the banksters. Combine that with a misguided understanding of "freedom" and you can explain what we have today. This system will kill capitalism, because capital stored in the financial system will effectively be stolen and/or destroyed by the banksters. What we have at this point is Thieferism, not Captialism !
Don't expect the financial industry fix themselves. They will be fixed by some future government. Mr Hitler had a drastic fix for the banksters and I guess we will see that again in some form.
They had less than 10 Missiles. If they had 200, they would have annihilated the RN down there. Not Freedom Missiles. French Missiles.
Before we get all 'holier than though', UK did a disguised currency control when it did large scale Quantitative Easing. It barred hi denomination Euros notes on the excuse of 'terrorists use them'. Seriously, as if a terrorist would draw attention to themselves by changing a 500 Euro note in the UK! Why would their bosses even give them Euros?? Why wouldn't the terrorists be given sterling in the first place! It made absolutely no sense, if you believed it at face value.
In reality they wanted to prevent people withdrawing sterling and buying Euro notes while QE was going on. By barring the high denomination it became impractical to hold euro cash, the quantity would have just been too high. Euro zone countries had also refused to do a currency swap, a currency swap is what USA did when it did a QE, by swapping worthless printed dollars for Euros, it ensured the dollar wouldn't fall in relation to the Euro. In effect Euro would prop up dollar. This was not offered to Gordon Brown because he was despised in Europe.
With money left in the UK banks, the banks were less likely to collapse, and better still if it was in UK Sterling, then QE would dilute it, shifting money from the bank account holder to whichever fat banker the Bank of England decided to hand the money to.
So Argentina did a less subtle form of currency control, but they are hardly the only country to do it, UK does it too.
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...
..that is what you have. If you subscribe to the notion that there are absolute authorities on earth, it is obvious that the government will assume that role.
So - go to the street and protest that authoritarianism. Go into politics and try to fight all that intrasparency and corruption. Quit the church. They will only support all the manipulations by the rich and powerful. Of course it will be called a "social program to help the needy". When in reality it is a program to enrich the ruling party's members. And channel lots of money to the church and the perverts who are their clergy.
A swift death is always best.. Know anybody who can do it in 2?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
That argentinians feel the need to use a foreing currency via a foreing system to make local transactions? really?
Think about it...
This article is outdated as the news actually happened last week, and it is wrong by now, confirmed by PayPal that it was a "System error".. the operation between argentinians is still possible. I did one today.
Zombie Herbert Hoover 2012!
hope PayPal have lost a fortune
Let's put it in your post's terms:
A=Argentine Peso
B=Paypal $US
C=Black Market $US
According to the article:
A=B/4.7, x=1/4.7
B=C, y=1
xy=1/4.7
A=C/6.3
A!=xyC
This is exactly what arbitrage is, and the free-market solution would eventually be that the black market rate would change to 4.7Peso/dollar.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
I wonder what (or who) made Paypal cancel domestic transactions in Argentina. If anything, they were making a lot of money out of this.
This is very likely due to the increasing restrictions on Argentina's exchange market. I live there, and the past years have gotten increasingly worse - the Argentinian peso has an inflation of nearly 25% but the government insists on keeping an (almost) fixed exchange rate with the dollar. A lot of people perceived, correctly, that the USD became a cheap way to protect their savings. The net result is that Argentinians withdrew almost $87 *billion* USD between 2003 and 2011 from Argentina's economy.
So, instead of attacking inflation the government decided to choke the exchange market. This happened slowly but right now is simply impossible to buy/sell foreign currency. Even if you're traveling, the amounts that they clear you to buy are ridiculous - less than 20 Euros per day of stay in Europe, for example.
As a result, there's now a black market that tops the "official" dollar value by more than 20%. A lot of commercial operations are using this as a reference; it's the only one you can get your hands on.
The only exception so far have been credit cards, which, at least until last month allowed unrestricted purchases with the official value quote. I say "at least" because credit card purchases have recently been taxed (15%), disguised as an "advancement on income taxes". On top of that banks are discretely restricting credit card operations as well, since most institutions simply can't get enough currency. My guess is that Paypal has been having a lot of issue clearing transactions.
Seeing as how Romney is more hesitant about QE3 and further stimulus, I don't see how saying he'll bring about devaluation more quickly than Obama is in any way Informative. With each additional QE venture, the US increases the risk of destroying one of the pillars of its strength -- its status as a reserve currency -- since with these stimuluses, the US is essentially picking itself up by putting an arm on the shoulder of every other economy in the world. While a softer kind of currency manipulation compared to what China does, it's manipulation nonetheless, and builds resentment in a world that already resents the country. How long before those who wish to move away from the USD outnumber those who wish to stay? Romney might not be able (or even willing) to put a stop to it, but to say he'll make it worse? That's hard to believe.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Nice analysis, but it is a little old and paypal said it was a mistake: http://www.ieco.clarin.com/economia/PayPal-confusion-problemas-usuarios-argentinos_0_773322918.html. Spanish only, sorry (if you read it please don't stop on the title, they are always "wrong")
Do you know why the dot com bubble burst when it did? Because the Bush/Gore election wasn't settled. Businesses (investors) hate change and uncertainty. If Gore had been found to be the winner at the first Florida count, the bubble would have lasted at least another 6 month, maybe a year. If Bush would have won in the first count, the bubble would have popped after inauguration. But the uncertainty around the election increased investor hesitation, and down came the house of cards. Mitt will accelerate the crash, not because I hate Repulicans (which I do, as I hate all politicians equally), but that he has not stated what he will do, other than "the opposite of Obama" which doesn't narrow down the possibilities suffficiently. When he starts setting policy (if he ever bothers to do so) in office, the money will stop, waiting to see the results, accelerating the crash.
The problem with Mitt is that he isn't an active president. He doesn't have a clear set of actions or promises. He just has a list of things he wants to sabotage or avoid. Nobody knows what he will do. And that will hasten the fall. Even if his actions are positive (which, given the spend an borrow policies of the Republicans, would be inconsistent with expectations), they won't matter nearly as much as leadership, and he has leadership so long as he's running against someone he can make fun of. But when the election is over, other than being the Anti-Obama, what's left?
Learn to love Alaska
"Another 4 years of MAObama and the dollar will equal the peso."
That will be terrific for exports, and usefully punish imports forcing adaptive change.
Good.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
If you actually look at it, the mortgage meltdown wasn't just because builders built more and bigger houses then the market needed and banks helped sell them to people who couldn't afford the payments - normally when that happens, there's a bit of a slump until the market catches up, a few banks fail and many more disappoint their stockholders, and many people who've lost their jobs lose their savings and maybe their houses, but it's not a massive meltdown.
This was about the banks and investment companies taking all of those marginal loans, packaging them together into securities that didn't necessarily make sense even to the sellers, getting formerly-respected auditors to call them "AAA+++ WOULD BUY AGAIN", and successfully selling them to investors who didn't do the due diligence to realize just how worthless an investment in the margins of a package of marginal loans could be, leading everybody else to need to compete against unsustainable investment rates by doing similarly risky things.
Barney Frank may have told the banks they'd better start making loans to poor people - he didn't tell them to lie about the securities they packaged the loans into, or to invest the profits in a floating crap game by buying up similar bad securities from other scammers. And funny, most of those derivatives and credit default swaps and such were unregulated because of a law the otherwise-conservative Phil Gramm got passed on his way out the door.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Are you kidding? You should hear what the Occupy crowd say about the Democrats and their bankster buddies!
Sure, if you bought a house you couldn't afford, because some mortgage sales person (who got a commission whether or not you could afford it) told you it would work fine as long as prices kept going up, then Barney Frank wasn't really such a good friend, and writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates point out that this consistently happens to poor and black people during every housing bubble of the last century or so. Of if you bought a house you could afford, as long as you and your spouse were both working, because it was a great investment and rents in Silicon Valley were going up even faster than house prices, especially in the neighborhoods with decent schools, and one of you got sick or lost your job when your startup collapsed, then you also lost badly.
But Barney Frank didn't tell banks to repackage those subprime or prime-but-risky loans into complex derivatives, report the values dishonestly, extract the good bits and use the remaining toxic assets as collateral for Credit Default Swaps, and use those as markers in a floating craps game, while using their expected winnings to make the Federally-insured parts of their banks look better than they were. You might want to talk to Phil Gramm about that - he didn't spend all his time encouraging fiscal responsibility the way he did with Gramm-Rudman.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
What they told the minorities was pretty much "If you've got good credit, you can buy a house! You can't lose as long as prices keep going up!"
The real trick was increasing the division of labor and decreasing the breadth of auditing and oversight in the banking and finance business so that lots of players could make money whether the loans were good or bad, and using badly-understood derivatives to let the banks that originally made the loans pass on the risks to other people.
That's why, instead of getting a slump where the marginal buyers lose their houses and banks end up holding a lot of unsold inventory they've foreclosed on for a couple of years instead of making profits for their stockholders, like we did with Neil Bush's S&L scams in the 80s that cost a few billion dollars, we got 2008's Chaos! Anarchy! Dogs and Cats Living Together! Mass Hysteria! bank bailout costing the Feds a few Trillion dollars. But all y'all Republicans can still blame the subprime-loan-buying minorities if you like.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Your medication. Take it.
Anytime there is a chart that shows how the average worker isn't doing as well...those graphs all start going weird in the early 70's. Which happens to be when Nixon took America off the gold standard and inflation took hold.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
No telling what Obama will do once he's not running for reelection. Uncertainty on all sides.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The markets don't agree. He may not have done what he said, but he did what any good Republican would have done (borrow like there's no tomorrow and pass massive illegal laws giving piles of cash to private industry). Mitt's talking like a teabagger, and we've seen what austerity got Japan (a decade long depression, even when the rest of the world was booming, though they were sheltered from the current recession because of their deflective shields of a worse depression), and the EU (riots).
Learn to love Alaska
Against documented sources you couldn't disprove http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3110069&cid=41346029 which you ran from, troll.