Barter System

In early December, 2001 ZetaTalk stated that a Barter System would begin to replace currency, due to currency instability. By February, 2002 this was reported in Argentina.

Barter has Replaced the Cash Economy for many Argentines
Time, by Peter Katel

Buenos Aires, the "Paris of Latin America," these days looks decidedly Third World. Of course the broad boulevards, late 19th-century buildings and teeming cafes downtown may suggest European gentility. But ten miles away, in the working-class suburb of Quilmes, merchants are hawking everything from homemade turnovers to new and used clothes, custom carpentry, haircuts and fresh produce. The shell of the old Bernalesa metal works has been turned into a massive market, whose four-foot aisles are so jammed that thousands of men, women and children can barely make their way over the dirt floor, past rickety stands of unpainted, unfinished wood — this in a country where shopping used to mean going to the supermarket, or the mall. ... Street protests have toppled four presidents in two weeks, but Argentina's 21st-century Great Depression is deepening. And it's driving tens of thousands of people to the "National Barter Network," centered at Bernalesa. Last month alone, the network expanded from a half-million to 640,000 families. Here, and at 600 other markets, they're trading goods and services for creditos, which can then be used to purchase other goods and services. "If you don't have any money, this is the only way to survive," says Irma Gonzalez, 46, a who lost her legal secretary job three months ago and is planning a barter-market clothing business. ... Some municipal governments, including the town of Gonzales Chaves in Buenos Aires province, are accepting eggs and chickens as tax payments, using them to feed poor families. The future? "Argentina can become one big barter club," says chemist Horacio Covas, a barter network co-founder. Indeed, the only economy that's growing in Argentina right now is the prehistoric one.