Argentina

Piles of Argentine pesos. Ahead of your post-World Cup vacation to Argentina, you might want to give this story a little scan. Ricardo Ceppi/Getty Images.

[Central bankers](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-17/what-is-the-fed-discount-window-why-are-banks-using-it-so-much?sref=qYiz2hd0) and government officials in the US and Europe are trying to [reassure the public and investors](https://www.npr.org/2023/03/16/1163835018/policymakers-on-both-sides-of-the-atlantic-aim-to-shore-up-banking-confidence) that things are okay, to varying degrees of success. The [prospect of bank bailouts](https://www.vox.com/money/2023/3/13/23638417/svb-bank-bailout-signature-fed-fdic-treasury-janet-yellen) felt like a question largely of the past, or at the very least, one not in the immediate present. [Sign up to get this column in your inbox](http://vox.com/big-squeeze-newsletter). The thing about confidence in institutions is that once it’s lost, it’s hard to get it back. The banks themselves are working to get people to relax as well — [and to get the government to promise](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-18/midsize-us-banks-ask-fdic-to-insure-all-deposits-for-two-years?sref=qYiz2hd0) it will back them if things go awry, too. “I don’t think that the government would be willing to steal that money from the people and get the dollars and give them pesos like in 2001. “They can’t plan for the future, they have to live in an eternal present.” Workers and unions are consistently in search of higher wages to try to keep up with skyrocketing prices, leading to frequent pickets and protests and a sense that it’s just never enough. Hora compared it to boiled frog syndrome, where things get worse and worse but just slowly enough that in the day-to-day it’s rather imperceptible. I want to keep up my permanent residency in case everything goes to hell in the US, and also I go because it is fun and great. People can get dollar (and, of course, peso) accounts in a bank, but many prefer not to — instead, they hide stacks of dollars around their homes. It’s about double the official rate — at the moment, the official exchange rate is around 200 pesos to a dollar, while the blue rate is around 380 to one.