7 ms·
Before civil war in my old country a quarter a century ago, people were doing the same thing: buy something big and expensive in installments. First couple woul
by NikolaNovak 5y ago
Before civil war in my old country a quarter a century ago, people were doing the same thing: buy something big and expensive in installments. First couple would suck. Last few were negligible.
Another story that seems surreal to me now (having lived in Canada 25 years): My grandma and virtually everyone her age was habitually 3 order of magnitude off when it came to money. She'd give me a 2 million dinar note and say "here's 2 thousand".
Every now and then there was a reset - basically you'd print new money and lop of some digits.
I was <12 years old through this so only have vague memories but man, what a crazy way to live -- and yet it was fairly... "normal". Is what it is. Human brain adjusts to anything (including to a certain degree the civil war that followed).
- travisjungroth 5y agoMexico did a 1000-1 reverse split in the 90s. You still see the old bills sometimes. You just treat a 20,000 pesos bill as a 20.
- edko 5y agoSince Argentina started having its own currency, it had to reset it 5 times, dropping a total of 13 zeroes. I have memories of two of those resets and, similar to what you say about your grandma, I remember older people translating to the older currency for a while, until they fully adapted to the new one.
- askonomm 5y agoHave been in Argentina for the past year and honestly the amount of paper cash I need to carry with me for most basic of use is ridiculous, so they're soon going to have to create bigger bills or reset again.
- culopatin 5y agoLol those bills you carry are the new ones. I left in 2017 and we only had up to 100. Which had been the same since the 90s.
- askonomm 5y agoDamn, yeah, biggest is 1000 now I think, and even that is worth only around 4 USD (unofficial rate). That'll buy you milk, bread and butter or ~4 beers.
- pibechorro 5y agoMy first purchase as a kid with my own money was for bubble gum. The bill I handed them had 3 zeros on it..
- edko 5y agoI don't get it. As a pibe chorro, you should have just taken it and ran away.
- selimthegrim 5y agoWhen the civil war started (presuming this is ex-YU) did rate of inflation really go up that much compared to before? My understanding is it was bad in the late 80s, very bad 89, stabilized in 90 thanks to Markovic, and then resumed going up once the war kicked off.
- sasawpg 5y agoInflation stabilized very briefly, but the situation was unsustainable and it quickly resumed. I was pretty young at the time, but I remember that many people went for weeks/months without getting paid. Some government positions fared better than others, but overall the economy struggled. Then the war kicked off in 1991 and everything fell apart.
- selimthegrim 5y agoSomeone commented elsewhere on the thread with a video clip of Markovic talking to the Federal Assembly.
- sasawpg 5y agoUnfortunately there were plenty individuals/businesses that exploited inflation (among other things) during the war (and leading up to it) for massive gain. They'd borrow heavily, buy up as much staple as possible then quickly sell at a discount. By the time original debt was paid back, high inflation ate away at the original value of debt. So despite originally selling at a loss, it was still a profitable business. That of course is assuming they even bothered to pay anything back. Often enough it was a game of survival (business/personal). Nothing to pay back if the person is dead or business gone.
- drugstorecowboy 5y agoBut why buy staples with the money to sell at a discount? Would you mind explaining this a little more, I'm curious and don't understand how that would be profitable. Buying staples and selling them later for inflation adjusted prices then using that to pay back the loan would make sense but not quickly selling at a discount.
- pessimizer 5y agoDebt inflates away.
- zamfi 5y agoPresumably they'd buy with an installment plan or debt financed over time. I.e., you buy $3000 worth of goods, but pay $200/mo for 30 months ($6k total). You sell for $2000 cash (not on installment). So far, you've paid $200 and gotten $2000, up $1800. If you paid back $200/mo in real terms, this would be a terrible deal! But every month your payment real value drops 10%, so you only really are only paying 200 + 180 + 162 + ... and over 30 months you only pay $1915 in original-value terms.
- theresistor 5y agoBut the $2000 you got from the sale also devalues...
- kingofpandora 5y agoTurkey did a 1,000,000:1 conversion a while back. Before that you could almost say that the local currency was millions. - "How much is this book?" - "9 million" - "Here's 10 million" - "And one million in change, sir" OK, so that only worked up to a certain value. No one would say their rent was "1,000 million". In that case, the currency was billions!