Argentines Keep Cash Under Mattresses Even as Milei Pushes Bank Accounts

You’d be surprised how damp and smelly dollar bills get, Alejandro Lamas says, when they’ve been squirreled away under a mattress for years. He’s gotten so many stacks of them from Argentines he’s sold used cars to over the years that he’s a bit of a connoisseur. Slip him a counterfeit and he knows at first touch.

It’s a skill that’s just as important to him today as it was when Lamas peddled his very first used car in Buenos Aires four decades ago, and it looks like it will be for the foreseeable future. President Javier Milei’s latest effort to coax Argentine savers to deposit their cash in dollar-denominated accounts is struggling to gain traction, highlighting the singular distrust citizens still have for the government and banks.