The Buenos Aires barber's books: a history of 19,900% inflation

autotldr Bot , 9 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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In his small barbershop with sandy wooden floorboards and a fishbowl glass window to the street outside, Ruben Galante has for some four decades watched presidents come and go, myriad economic crises, and fast-rising prices.

Galante is worried about his adult children, a son in Buenos Aires and a daughter who moved overseas, part of a brain drain of young Argentines looking for better opportunities.

The early years were a blur of shifting politics and economic crisis as the country returned to democracy but spiraled into hyperinflation by the late 1980s, when dizzying prices could change several times daily.

The peso in its current form came into being with the Currency Board peg in 1991, after half a decade of the ‘austral’ that ended with hyperinflation during the last years of Raul Alfonsin, the icon of Argentina’s 1983 return to democracy.

Pressure started to build in the late 90s as overspending ballooned and unemployment spread, ending in the major 2001-02 economic crisis under President Fernando de la Rua.

By late 2001 angry Argentines were calling on the president to quit and staged a run on banks as they tried to withdraw deposits after the infamous “corralitos” where the government seized savings.

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The original article contains 1,209 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 83%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!