A Argentina volta aos tempos de Carlos Gardel (no cambio, pelo menos...)

De fato, e isto num duplo sentido: como já disseram muitos, o tango é o lamento de um cornudo. Bem, não fui eu quem disse, mas que seja.
Por outro lado, os tempos de Gardel eram os da penúria de dólares, dos controles de capitais, das manipulações sobre o câmbio e vários outros pecados mais (piores até que os pecados da carne...).
Pois bem, a Argentina, que já tinha voltado aos anos 1960, em matéria de protecionismo comercial (onde nós também estamos), também já voltou aos anos 1930, de Gardel, em matéria de controles e restrições cambiais.
A despeito disso, a classe média continua viajando, gastando e acumulando dólares, como demonstra a matéria abaixo.
E para finalizar, o tango de Gardel, "Cuesta Abajo", enviado pelo meu amigo Maurício David:
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

A vacation from inflation

 by H.C. | BUENOS AIRES

The Economist, May 16th 2013, 15:41

ON A recent flight from Buenos Aires to New York, I was seated in the dreaded middle seat in the final row. At check-in I pleaded to change, but despite my offers to help the flight attendants serve mushy ravioli in exchange for a window, I was rebuffed. “Sorry, miss. The flight’s totally full,” the airline agent told me.

I was shocked. Since her re-election in 2011, President Cristina Fernández has made it far more difficult for Argentines to travel abroad. She has restricted access to foreign currency, tightened import and export constraints and introduced financial restrictions on travel, in a bid to prevent capital flight and shore up the central bank’s dollar reserves. Any Argentine wishing to buy dollars to travel abroad must provide their tax-identification number to the tax agency (AFIP) and declare where, when and why they are travelling. Even after waiting in long queues and filling in stacks of paperwork, would-be travellers are often refused dollars, or granted miserly sums that would hardly cover a souvenir snow-globe. When recently asked to explain how AFIP determines the allotment of dollars, its director bumbled: “It is a formula that is periodically changed that has ingredients from the central bank, AFIP and God. The truth? I can’t explain it because I don’t know exactly how it operates.” Those turned down by AFIP can buy dollars on the black market, but at a punishing premium that recently soared to nearly double the official rate.

So travelling abroad is a headache. But despite these deterrents, Argentines are travelling more since the currency controls were implemented, with the number of foreign trips growing 12.8% in 2012 and continuing to rise in 2013. Why?

Economists attribute the phenomenon to a loophole that allows Argentines with credit cards to access attractive exchange rates abroad. “It’s not like a debit card,” explains Daniel Marx, who runs an economic consultancy called Quantum Finanzas. “You don’t need to have dollars in your account in order to pay for dollar-priced goods outside the country.” When an Argentine travelling abroad makes a credit-card purchase, the payment is converted at the official exchange rate—a rate virtually impossible to access in Argentina. Even though the payments are then hit by a 20% tax, the spread is much smaller than that between the official rate of 5.23 pesos per dollar and the black-market rate that recently spiked to 10.45.

Inflation and import taxes have rendered many goods in Argentina overpriced, while import restrictions have made others scarce. Apple’s gadgets, for instance, are all but impossible to find in Argentina, and when available cost nearly triple what they would abroad. An Apple laptop that costs $1,199 in the United States sells for around $3,000 in Argentina.

Argentines can also use their credit cards to buy greenbacks. Though AFIP has banned debit card use abroad, Argentines can withdraw cash from their credit accounts at the official rate plus the 20% surcharge and bring the dollars home. With inflation running above 25%, many Argentines want to convert their savings into dollars. Argentine dollar-tourists flock in droves to nearby Uruguay, where they stuff their backpacks full of dollars before catching the hour-long ferry home. According to a recent BBC report, some individuals make the trip daily, often taking out money on several different credit cards.

Economists predict that the government will try to close the loopholes, perhaps by increasing the credit-card tax or by ratcheting up customs restrictions. AFIP already asks Argentines with foreign credit-card charges to prove they were travelling at the time (and hadn’t lent their card to somebody else to make purchases for them). Sometimes those who draw foreign currency from cash machines are made to demonstrate they weren’t intending to save it. Until AFIP finds a way to block these manoeuvres completely, however, it seems flights from Buenos Aires will continue to be full.

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Cuesta Abajo

Carlos Gardel

Si arrastré por este mundo
La verguenza de haber sido
El dolor de ya no ser
Bajo el ala del sombrero.
Cuántas veces, embozada,
Una lágrima asomada yo no pude contener

Si crucé por los caminos
Como un paria que el destino
Se empeño en deshacer

Si fui flojo, si fui ciego,
Solo quiero que hoy comprenda
El valor que representa el coraje de querer.

Era, para mi la vida entera
Como un sol de primavera
Mi esperanza y pasión,
Sabía que en el mundo no cabía.
Toda la humilde alegra de mi pobre corazón

Ahora cuesta abajo en mi rodada
Las ilusiones pasadas
Ya no las puedo arrancar.
Sueño, con el pasado que añoro,
El tiempo viejo que hoy lloro
Y que nunca volverá

Por seguir tras de sus huellas
Yo bebí incansablemente.
En la copa de dolor

Pero nadie comprendía
Que si todo yo le daba
En cada vuelta dejaba
Pedazos de corazón.

Ahora triste en la pendiente,
Solitario y ya vencido,
Yo me quiero confesar,
Si aquella boca mentía,
El amor que me ofrecía,
Por aquellos ojos brujos
Yo habra dado siempre más

Era, para mi la vida entera
Como un sol de primavera
Mi esperanza y pasión,
Sabía que en el mundo no cabía
Toda la humilde alegra de mi pobre corazón

Ahora cuesta abajo en mi rodada
Las ilusiones pasadas
Ya no las puedo arrancar

Sueño, con el pasado que añoro,
El tiempo viejo que hoy lloro
Y que nunca volverá