>When Milei slashed the monthly cash transfers from the federal government to the provinces, La Rioja went broke. In February, it fell into default
>So the governor [...] He created the province’s own currency, the chacho, had sheets of it printed up and started doling it out in wads of 50,000 to all government employees. [...] Shop owners weren’t outright forced, but rather strongly encouraged, to accept chachos just like they would pesos. One chacho equals one peso.
>Quintela has pointed merchants eager to get rid of their chachos to the two government offices in the capital city that will, after a 48-hour mandatory wait, exchange them for pesos. Wait all the way till December, Quintela has told them, and the provincial government will pay them 1.17 pesos for each chacho, effectively an interest rate of 17% in pesos that, when annualized, comes to over 50%.
>The chachos come in denominations of 1,000 to 50,000. Some three billion of them, or roughly $3 million, have been handed out, with plans to soon boost that amount to nine billion.
it is really that easy, people will unironically use monopoly money to buy and sellgoods
