Monday, April 15, 2013

Argentine Inflation May Be Over 100%

Lars Christensen writes:

Officially inflation in Argentina is around 11%. However, anybody who has just a minimum of knowledge about the Argentine economy knows that the Argentine inflation numbers are as real as Mickey Mouse. Inflation in Argentina is not 11%, but much higher.

According to an alternative measure of inflation the so-called Congressional Index, which is a price index based on private surveys inflation is more likely around 24-25%.

But inflation is likely even higher than that. Surveys of inflation expectations indicate that inflation is running around 30%.

However, I think that it might be even worse than that. One thing that is strongly distorting all of these measures is the extensive price controls that have been put in place in recent years in Argentina. These controls undoubtedly have “helped” curb inflation. However, the underlying reasons for the sharp increase in inflation cannot be removed by draconian price controls. It might have postponed inflation from rising further in the short-run, but sooner or later the underlying inflationary pressures will be translated into actual inflation.[...]

There is no doubt that inflation has accelerated further in the last couple of months and this is clearly confirmed by my calculation of the PPP [purchasing power parity] implied price level. Hence, over the past three months the PPP implied price level has increased by an annualized rate of 127%!

This is the reason why I would argue that it is likely that Argentine inflation already has surpassed 100% – maybe not on a year-on-year basis, but at least on a annualized basis over the last 3-6 months. This is not just high inflation, but rather an inflation rate that might very well turn into outright hyperinflation (more than 50% increase in prices per month) unless there is a dramatic change in economic policy in Argentina[...]

there is only one way of stopping the runaway inflation in Argentina and that is by stopping the printing press. Unfortunately it has hard to be optimistic that inflation will be slowed anytime soon when Argentina’s central bank governor don’t believe that there is a connection between money supply growth and inflation.

1 comment:

  1. My experience on the ground there certainly seems to reflect that. I wrote about my experience with inflation in Argentine and what I learned from the black market in money there.

    http://lionsofliberty.com/2013/02/21/argentina-inflation-and-black-market-money-a-report-from-the-ground/

    I'm no expert, but my layman analysis from seeing just a few weeks worth of price inflation for dollars on the black market , I estimated 168% inflation (emphasis on the word estimate).

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