Vaccine inflation: worrying, but not unexpected

Adalbert Krieger Vasena, who from March 1967 implemented an anti-inflationary plan, benefited from the fact that the English, to solve an internal problem, once again “discovered” that Argentine meat had foot-and-mouth disease and stopped buying from us. The meat producers accused the Minister of the Economy of being slow in international negotiations aimed at reversing the measure imposed by the perfidious Albion, because in the short term it reduced the inflation rate. The situation was reversed in the early years of the 1970s.

José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, in September 1979, that is, in full force of the exchange table, had to face a sudden increase in the price of meat. He did not draw the official estimate of the inflation rate, but instead published two indices: the usual one, and the “stark” one.. Everything was forgotten after a short time, because it was a seasonal increase in the price of the product.

Ricardo Mazzorín, Secretary of Commerce of Minister Juan Vital Sourrouille, in 1986 tried to neutralize an increase in the price of beef that compromised the operation of the Austral plan by importing chickens. The idea was not a bad one: given the increase in the scarcity of a good, the supply of substitutes increased. But he faced it with the characteristics and the speed with which the State hires. Result: Thousands of tons of chickens were frozen for years in Argentina, and finally destroyed, because they were no longer suitable for human consumption.

Lucio Graciano Reca, economist specialized in the agricultural sector, He usually says that governments through their actions turn the livestock cycle into a cyclone. Hopefully we are not at the gates of a new example of this.

The truth is that the inflation rate, which during 2022 was 100%, was not much higher thanks to the liquidation of animals as a result of the drought. Process that, as expected, is turning around; that is, it is moving from liquidation to withholding. The only thing that the authorities do not have to do is act as if we were not in front of a real phenomenon.

Last: not even the extreme monetarists can ignore that in addition to the fiscal deficit and the monetary issue there are real causes that drive the increase in prices, nor the Government act as if in inflationary matter we were coming phenomenon but the problem is that the cows do not collaborate.