For two days in June crowds in Argentina’s second largest city, Rosario, ran amok in an eruption of rioting and looting that left at least fourteen people dead. As in the Weimar Republic, however, the principal losers of Argentina’s hyperinflation were not ordinary workers, who stood a better chance of matching price hikes with pay rises, but those reliant on incomes fixed in cash terms, like civil servants or academics on inflexible salaries, or pensioners living off the interest on their savings. And, as in 1920s Germany, the principal beneficiaries were those with large debts, which were
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