It’s been 31 years since the $100 bill hit the street. In 1992, in full convertibility, the Casa de la Moneda has ordered what for more than 26 years has been the paper with the highest denomination of Argentine coins, it was worth 100 dollars. Now, with the blue dollar at $353, it barely equals 0.28 cents of US currency.
Comparisons are hateful: in 1992, a 100 dollar bill allowed to purchase 33 pounds of meat at $3 each. In 2023, sufficient for less than 100 grams.
Measured in 500 gram packs of yerba mate, there are 93 fewer in the last 30 years. From 93.5 packs at just over $1 to nearly a quarter of a pack with a shelf value of over $360. Buy 33 pounds of beef at $3 each. In 2023 it is enough for less than 100 grams.
It seems almost obvious: in the last three decades the banknote has gone through the end of convertibility, devaluations, institutional crises and years of very high inflation.
The $100’s birthday is on the first day of every year., the date on which it officially entered into force. “The Executive Decree of 10 October 1991, n. 2128, ordered the entry into force of the WEIGHT LINE from 1 January 1992. A parity was established of one peso ($1) equivalent to ten thousand australes (A 10,000).remember the website of the Central Bank.
Today, there are only two Argentine bills that exceed $1: the $500 one and the $1,000 one. The former is equivalent to US$1.14, if the informal exchange rate is taken into account; while the latter does not reach 3 USD.
The loss in value of the banknote is so great that some artists have started using it as a canvas for their works. As reported by the Reuters news agency, in Salta, the Argentine portraitist Sergio Guillermo Díaz chooses them to paint because they cost less than buying a canvas.
“Today it is sometimes convenient for me to paint the highest denomination banknote here, in Argentina. I paint it and I can sell it for much more than I could do with that banknote,” said Argentine portrait painter Sergio Guillermo Díaz in an interview with Reuters in the city of Salta, in the northwest of the country.
The painter resorts to inflation and the depreciation of the local currency making works in which he plays with the dollar bill and the increase of its current value in pesos.
“I started playing this game of sometimes ‘shuffling’ the dollar bill with the current value and, within a very short time, we have these situations where our currency starts to lose more and more value,” commented Díaz. .
The artist intervenes on the banknotes with different references, ranging from the soccer star Lionel Messi lifting the World Cup to ironic paintings illustrating the devaluation that the Argentine peso has undergone in recent years.
NS
Source: Clarin
