Change We Can’t Believe In: Financial Page: The New Yorker
The Retiro queue is a sign of the most peculiar economic crisis in recent memory: the great Buenos Aires coin shortage. For well over a year now, small change has been hard to come by there. Stores hang “No Coins” signs in their windows, and offer candies instead of change. Taxi-drivers round up—or down—to avoid giving up precious coins, while smaller merchants sometimes turn away business if you have only bills to offer them. The government has fined banks thousands of pesos for refusing to hand over coins, and, in October, the city’s subways became temporarily free when the booths ran short of change. For the average Bonaerense, everyday transactions now entail a complicated calculation of where coins can be acquired and when they will be needed.
That’s especially true because most people need change to get around Buenos Aires: the city’s buses accept only coins. This has made them an obvious culprit in the shortage, as they take in millions of pesos in coins but, unlike other businesses, don’t hand any out. If the bus companies hold onto the coins rather than depositing them in a bank, they can make a significant dent in the amount of change in circulation. And they did have an incentive to do this: before the government cracked down on them, they were reselling coins to businesses at a hefty markup.
Hyper- inflation is causing a stessing of currency check the thread:::::
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