Argentines Say Buy Now

I had a great conversation with Texans Terri and her husband Mike yesterday at a great old Buenos Aires sidewalk café.  What a treat!  Great people and they even brought me a year of back issues of my beloved Harpers.  Thank you guys so very much.

Terri and Mike have been coming to Buenos Aires every year for a long time now.  Along the way our coversation strayed to the economy here and the subject of inflation.  I thought of them both when I read a Bloomberg article just now: "Argentines Say Buy Now as 25% Inflation Outlook Buoys Car Sales"

We talked about inflation as a psychological phenom as well as an economic one.  A lot of experts say that when inflation reaches 20%, folks' spending (and NOT spending) behavior gets out of whack.  But with the Argentine economy growing as fast as China for each of the last 7 years, it´s hard for a Yanq to keep a level head.

We norteamericanos, upon seeing some attractive consumer item, have been used to waiting for prices to come down for almost a generation now.  Not many of my friends remember the 80's when ...if a great camera or TAPE RECORDER came on the market... the advice was, "better buy it now, the prices are only going to go up!"

But that´s where we seem to find ourselves in La República nowadays.

Now I wish that Terri and Mike had brought me some Harpers from the Ford administration!