Andrés Asiain, director of the Scalabrini Ortiz Center for Economic and Social Studies in Buenos Aires: “In economics, one often faces the dilemma of either choosing higher employment (at the cost of higher infl ation) or price stabilization (but at the cost of increased unemployment).

This dichotomy has been broken by the current administration, which has brought the economy to ‘stagfl ation,’ characterized by high infl ation and unemployment. Since the change in government, the annual infl ation rate increased from 24.4 percent (in November 2015) to 42.8 percent (in July 2016), according to provincial statistics that were not found to be altered by the previous administration. Meanwhile, unemployment reached 9.3 percent of the labor force according to the revamped national statistics institute. The increase in the unemployment rate is already a matter of controversy, and taking into account the statistics from the city of Buenos Aires, which has been governed by Macri’s party for several years, the unemployment rate increased 1.9 percent in the last year. The deceleration of infl ation
in the last month is a consequence of the courts’ rejection of a proposed hike in public service prices. Beyond the change in foreign
exchange policy, which after the abrupt initial devaluation focused on the containment of dollar exchange prices propped up by foreign debt, the government exposed the market to the importation of several key consumption products. These policies are putting several production sectors in crisis, including producers of foods such as fruits, vegetables and milk, who have protested in recent days by giving away free food products to the impoverished public in the middle of the Plaza de Mayo.” [...]