At the moment of truth there are no careful or fair prices: there are only uncontrolled prices

It is a worn out product, a little spoiled, grandmothers would say, that Kirchnerism refloats all the time as if it were a leading brand and not what it has proven to be: an ineffective control system already of the second selection type, and in the end a highly debatable display of management capacity.

Without further ado, it is about the Careful Prices that the tandem Cristina Kirchner-Axel Kicillof It was born at the beginning of 2014, with the idea of ​​outlining a real inflation then installed at 30% per year or close to 38%. After hibernating for much of the macrista season, the system was relaunched by Alberto Fernández at the end of 2020 and relaunched now.

For lack of better ideas and a real stabilization plan the Government has decided to add to the bustle more of the same controls in provinces and municipalities, that is, the participation of governors and mayors predictably official. A detail, if you want a rarity, animates the move: 25% of the fines charged to offenders will go to cover the operating costs of each jurisdiction.

It is clear that time is ticking even the most patient patience wears out and that way, finally, the hurry rules in all the field. Trouble means an INDEC price index that is determined to end the year around 100%, doubling the 2021 record, followed by another that some consultants project above 100% in the electoral, critically electoral 2023.

It could be affirmed, then, that there jumps conclusively the little utility of Careful Prices and, more broadly, the failure of controls, of freezes the sometimes truculent agreements and the most diverse ways of kicking the ball forward that is a registered trademark of Kirchnerism.

Of that, pure result, also speaks the 66.1% that the cost of living accumulates in the first nine months of this year against 37% of the same period of 2021 and 22.3% of January-September 2020. That is, an inflation that tripled in three jumps and that, breaking records of the worst, has just climbed to the highest annual peak high since 1991.

Notoriously, the control model that comes from the Kicillof of the second presidency of Cristina K. did not serve to control anything, or to straighten anything, or lower anything. Namely, zero return on certain key prices of the family basket.

It may be that the fault lies not entirely with the model, but rather shared with those who applied it and the political context in which it was applied. But the truth, in the end, is that reality has much of what the official statistics say.

In order to add data to the bag of confusion, a very recent one from INDEC tells that of the 320,000 prices that the agency’s pollsters survey each month, in September only 3.87% corresponded to Care Prices. Unexplained or exit signal, if contrasted with the 13.13% that it touched in November 2021 and the 12.23% in December 2021.

The report of the Institute of Statistics clarifies, without further details, that the presence of “Cares” in the sample and therefore the scope of that presence, These are not issues that are the responsibility of INDEC. The clarification smacks of ignoring possible suspicions about the management of the system, that is, in the face of a resurgence of the well-known Moreno effect.

Regardless of any hypothesis and the place where you want to put it, the ups and downs reveal that someone with weight in the Government decided to reduce the percentages in the drastic way in which they were reduced, almost to their minimum expression.

Inevitable question: was it because the system did not generate the expected benefits or because it was thought necessary to stop going around and directly reinforce the turnstiles?

Of that endless chain of uncertainties and confusing signals It is the swerve that has just hit the price policy, to put the ship in the opposite direction to the one it was going, with contributions from governors and mayors included. It is another example of the zigzag that characterizes the decisions of power.

Precisely, the seal of the bids inside the dome appears clear in the crosses that preceded the swerve and that explain the swerve.

To begin with, the in-depth proposal of the vice president to freeze the cost of food and its direct brother: the resurrection of Care Prices. Plus the definition of Sergio Massa, when the noise advanced: “A freeze is like stepping on the hose. You brake for a while, but the water is there”.

There, on the verge of the explicit clash, the contenders decided to stop: a technical tie, the commentators would say. From a friendly corner, Kicillof followed the feints.

There is nothing definitively inexplicable, then, in the disorderly price structure, of highs and lows, abstruse if dark tones are preferred, only always related to Kirchner’s decisions and indecisions.

Within that everything has to do with everything there is a datum that defines the result and what follows the result.

He points out that if the government never had an anti-inflationary plan, although it arrived with the 50% that the macrismo had left it, and even less an economic plan, it was primarily because internal bids prevented it from having it. Just like that way of governing or misgoverning that he commanded from the beginning and scared away advisers.

Then certain results are understood that arise from crossing prices of the so-called “fair” with those that the INDEC registers for similar products. That is, that some of the goods considered essential have increased the same or very similar to the same both on one side and on the other; among them, milk, minced meat and noodles.

In the unstructured structure it is also possible to find increases of 42.1% per year for electricity, gas and other fuels consumed in the metropolitan area of ​​the Capital and Greater Buenos Aires together with 112% in the postponed Northeast. Reverse federalism, good K-style.

Always annual variations, the decoupled price list can continue with clothing at 127% and vegetables at 125%, with bread at 93 and prepaid at 84%. And from the same payroll, 63% for public passenger transport and a very modest 36% for Internet and telephony.

The full mismatch synthesis jumps in the 20 percentage points that separate the so-called core inflationwhere prices abound, let’s say loose or more or less free, of the index that reflects the movements of those regulated by the government, such as public rates and transportation.

The INDEC numbers sing 82.3% against 62.1%, for the last twelve months.

No little painting, but, yes, a huge wall against which any stabilization plan that seeks to order the system and accommodate those prices that were left behind or at unsustainable levels will collide.

And if that’s the point, nothing beats the problem that represents the cost of food. A clean 71.7% of drinks indicates the index that goes from January to September and covers the Federal Capital and the GBA. With the 8% that paint private data for October, we would already be at 85% accumulated and thus, on the way to overflowing 100% throughout the year.

It is impressive that the Government still calls them Careful Prices or Fair Prices to their inoperative plans. But more impressive, or what everyone feels, that we now have a subsidy for indigence, although, yes, transitory: 45,000 pesos in two tranches of 22,500 each, in November and December.

Of course, it is a necessary condition not to be in any social plan, such as Work or the Food Card, nor collect retirement or pension, nor receive family allowances or the Child Allowance, nor have social work. That is, being an adult with no income, one of the 2 million or so who live decidedly outside the system.

It only remains for someone from the Government to confess that everything is to avoid social conflicts at Christmas and New Year. I mean, the truth.