[QUOTE=Dirk Diggler]As far as real estate values go, look in the Clarin clasificados, rents are in pesos, property for sale is in USD. In August 05 a female friend of my family bought a beautiful 5 bedroom apartment in Barrio Norte on Parana fronting Plaza Vicente Lopez for $300,000 USD, I bet the apartment was not worth 3x as much pre-corralito, because USD has been the medium for real estate prices, and prices held steady other than normal real estate fluctuations. [/QUOTE]I think there was a huge drop in real estate prices in dollars during the crisis. So much so that even a low-roller like me gave some serious thought to swooping in and buying up some property. I recall looking at one property in Palermo Chico in 2002-03 which was quite similar to Jackson's old mansion which was available for US$500K. The same type of property in the same area is probably back up to the US$1M range today.
Of course, it's difficult to find buyers for such properties in the absence of a mortgage market. That illiquidity, when combined with the propensity of the Argie government to steal from foreigners, was enough to dissuade me from making that speculation. In hindsight it probably would have worked out, but hindsight is always 20/20.
I say this because Moore's analysis of the corralito is firmly based on hindsight. At the time, people were panicking and were desperate because of the uncertainty. For him, and especially for him in hindsight, it wasn't so bad. Of course, he wasn't a part of the Argie middle class which was wiped out by its government's ever-present stupidity.
It was a great time for somebody who, like me and like most of the posters on this board, is paid in dollars and had no real stake in the Argentine economy. Prices dropped 70% in dollar terms and the greenback was king. I think that this fact accounts for the divergence of opinions in this thread.
