Crédito

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The Crédito ( Spanish for credit or credibility ) was an Argentine complementary currency that began on May 1, 1995 in Bernal , Buenos Aires Province , at a flea market .

background

The Crédito was printed by market operators themselves and was initially a kind of promissory note or emergency money . As early as 1991, the Argentine government pegged its own currency one-to-one with the rate of the US dollar in order to stop the rapid inflation in the country. The central bank is therefore only allowed to issue pesos in the equivalent of its own foreign currency and gold reserves. The predominantly poor population then began bartering on the so-called "Nodos". Since the state coffers were also empty, the province of Buenos Aires also issued “patacones” (bonds), which were also accepted as a means of payment by companies such as McDonald's if a special menu called “patacombo” was purchased with them. The patacón was worth one Argentine peso.

Club del Trueque

In the spring of 1995, the Argentine economy suffered from the tequila crisis that was triggered in Mexico , and unemployment rose by almost 20% for the first time. In this situation three unemployed scientists come together in Bernal and found the "Club del Trueque", the first exchange club in Argentina. Rubén Ravera, one of these three initiators, reported: “With pesos we could have afforded anything. But since none of us had any money in our pockets, we simply started printing the money ourselves […] the barter […] worked, although these credits were not covered by anything, except the trust and belief of the club members ”. Anyone who wanted to become a member of this exchange club had to apply in writing and also acknowledge the "principles of the global exchange network". Each newly accepted member received 50 of the self-printed Créditos. The value of a credit was set at 1 peso by the founders .

Further development

The operator of the currency was the "Red Global de Trueque Multireciproco" (RGT), also "Global Network of Multi-Reciprocal Exchange Clubs" or "Global Exchange Network" (GEN). The currency started out as a trading circle but was quickly replaced by printed currencies. After further experiments with an exchange circle called “nodine” ( no dinero , no money), Créditos were ultimately distributed as a printed currency. The RGT was organized as a network of swap clubs with participants from an educated middle class who had been made unemployed by the Argentina crisis in the late 1990s. The clubs were not organized centrally and had no uniform set of rules. You decided independently which credits from other clubs were accepted. In a later phase, some clubs merged into zones and networks. This open structure allowed very rapid growth, but also carried the risk of counterfeiting. The Crédito was an interest-free currency. An estimated $ 400 million in goods and merchandise were traded in Créditos in 2000. A survey carried out by members of the Department of Economics at Harvard University found in 2002 and 2003 a personal average exchange rate of two credits for one peso by participants who offered goods or services in both currencies. In July 2002, the unemployment rate in Argentina had risen to almost 25% and around seven percent of the population used the Crédito. The system was used in all provinces of Argentina and had acceptable reliability for a limited time. However, as the state of the national economy deteriorated, the number of participants in the RGT clubs increased rapidly and a growing percentage gave out credits without offering sufficient goods or services. The system suffered from hyperinflation and counterfeiting. Between 2002 and 2003, the government expanded unemployment insurance from 0.2 million to 2.5 million beneficiaries, making the peso available again as a means of payment to a section of the population who used Créditos but had an 89% preference for the peso.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Red Global de Trueque Multirrecíproco. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Audhe.org.uy, pp. 13-14 , archived from the original on February 16, 2016 ; accessed on February 16, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.audhe.org.uy
  2. ↑ Jens Glüsing: ARGENTINA Embarrassing petitions . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 2001 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Günter Hoffmann: Hunger in the land of milk and honey - On Argentina's barter markets, people no longer pay in pesos or dollars - but with "Créditos". In: Wiener Zeitung. Online, October 16, 2002, accessed February 16, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Stephen DeMeulenaere: Reinventing the Market: Alternative Currencies and Community Development in Argentina. In: International Journal of Community Currency Research 2000, Volume 4, ISSN  1325-9547 .
  5. ↑ 4.1 Survey of Exchange Club Participants and Coordinators (SECPC-2002). In: Secondary Currency: An Empirical Analysis (PDF; 520 kB, p. 13.) at la-macro.vassar.edu, accessed on February 16, 2016.
  6. ↑ 3 A Framework to Study Secondary Currency. In: Secondary Currency: An Empirical Analysis (PDF; 520 kB, p. 8.) at la-macro.vassar.edu, accessed on February 16, 2016.