Reuters details how Argentina inflation soaring as hazy future drives price hikes

Argentine President Alberto Fernandez, put on the spot to explain a damaging and stubborn inflation rate that is soaring towards 50%, turned to the punk rock musical genre of Patti Smith and the Ramones for inspiration. “Argentina is a punk nation,” the center-left president, who plays the guitar and named his dog after Bob Dylan, said in reference to the rebellious spirit of the musical movement born in the 1970s. “Everything is today, there is no tomorrow. Everything is in the short-term because there is no future.” The South American nation, he explained, had over years of runaway prices built up a national psyche so imbued with inflation that it had become a self-perpetuating vicious cycle. “People increase prices just in case,” he said. The lyrical answer, as Reuters detailed, underscores a concrete and major issue for his Peronist government, which had set its sights on inflation under 30% this year but has been surprised by runaway prices that sap savings, wages and consumer spending power.