Will April be the cruellest month? II

The two-month supermarket price freeze has only been in force a couple of days and already some retailers are reporting the panic buying and hoarding which invariably accompany such moves — some supermarkets are already imposing limits on purchases in order to protect their stocks and since the government has already gone this far down the road of control, it might consider rationing in order to avoid shortages. Critics have been quick to dismiss the freeze as a “stopgap” move but how do they do know that this is not exactly what it is? This drastic step flies too much in the face of bitter experience to permit any illusion that it could be a permanent or complete solution to inflation — this (plus the lack of any overt presidential blessing) tends to support the theory that it is an experimental manoeuvre for the collective wage bargaining season. Since all five umbrella labour groupings (whether pro-government or hostile) seem resolved to base their wage demands on the “inflation of the supermarket” rather than the tampered data of INDEC statistics bureau, the government would thus be adopting an “if Mohammed will not go to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed” approach to the problem — if INDEC figures bear no relation to retail reality, then supermarket trends must be frozen into line with INDEC in order to tame wage demands.

One collateral aspect of this move might well tell us more than the freeze itself (the tail could even be wagging the dog here) — namely, the ban on supermarket media advertising. This would have the highly beneficial effect (for the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner administration) of pulverizing the incomes of the larger (and critical) newspapers, which might even be a key driving-force behind the whole policy. But the elimination of all published information on supermarket discounts and offers also removes a key means whereby consumers can check if prices are in fact being held down (even if they would obviously notice any outrageous increases anyway). Could it thus be that the government is introducing price controls without any effective control (something to which the supermarket chambers could accede far more easily) — a largely declamatory policy designed for electoral rather than real effect?

But we can only really judge this freeze when it ends on what is April Fool’s Day in the Anglo-Saxon tradition — if indeed it does end then.