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."

Comments

The challenges of a global market

[Registered Coward v2]

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.

Re:The challenges of a global market

[Jane Q. Public]

"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."

Or -- far simpler -- just do as they did in the EU and make PayPal register as an actual bank.

Beef

[Kupfernigk]

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.)

I'm in Buenos Aires

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I'm in Buenos Aires

[lbschenkel]

The current situation in Argentina reminds me of Brazil before Plano Real when inflation was around 60% per month and people where running for the dollar. Some years before that the government froze 80% of the bank assets of the whole population, which was a total disaster.

In retrospect, it is amazing that Plano Real actually worked. I'm still amazed when I think about it: I was born in 1980 and in my lifetime I've seen Brazil adopt 6 different currencies! New governments would announce over the weekend that the currency have been renamed and three zeros have been cut (1000 = 1); until new banknotes were available the banks were stamping the old ones with the new name and value. Prices and contracts were frozen; it was a mess...

Even today many people still go to the supermarket and buy groceries for the whole month, out of habit. In the old times of hyper-inflation, you had to rush to the supermarket and buy everything you could because if you went in the morning and later went again in the same day but during the afternoon instead, prices would have changed already. When I was a young kid, and before we had barcode scanners and a ticket with the price was fixed in every piece of merchandise, supermarkets had full-time employees that spend their whole day attaching the new prices. I remember that I ran more than once to grab something in the end of a long corridor while the employee was setting the new prices at the other end, so I could pay the old price before he had the opportunity to change it.

If Brazil managed to fix that mess I bet Argentina can, too. It might take a while, though: it took us more than two decades.

Re:A word to the wise

[Anonymous Coward]

And how many of those people who lost their jobs were the ones that actually caused the problems? I don't recall seeing the CEOs of any of the banks hurting after their incompetence and hubris led to the crisis.

Re:A word to the wise

[Xest]

"It's the government of Argentina that is "gaming the system" by artificially increasing the price of dollars. Smart people are realizing that socialist policies are going to bring high inflation as they always do and wipe away people's life savings in the name of social justice ."

Like all systems, just as over the top free market capitalism led to the banking collapse, over the top socialism can indebt a country beyond it's means too (Greece).

But what isn't true is that socialist policies in general always inherently bring high inflation. Countries like Canada, Germany, the UK, most the Scandinavian nations and so forth are good examples.

Using one failing country to push your own political ideology is stupid, especially so when there are many other countries succesfully using elements of that ideology you so sternly oppose and claim is doomed to failure.

Re:A word to the wise

[ShieldW0lf]

What you mean to say is, the United States of America has been printing money and using it to make purchases from other nations, and those other nations hoard those US dollars and trade them amongst themselves rather than redeeming them for American made goods, so America basically gets a free ride on the back of everyone else and has since the 70s.

It's like if I wrote a cheque and used it to pay for groceries, and the grocer didn't cash it, but paid their power bill with it, and the power company didn't cash it, but paid their employees with it, etc, etc.

But it's going to come to an end soon... China is selling oil for Yuan, and Russia has made an agreement with them to supply them with as much oil and gas as they want.

http://www.examiner.com/article/dollar-no-longer-primary-oil-currency-as-china-begins-to-sell-oil-using-yuan

So, the era of the USA is at an end, along with the ridiculous culture they've created.