Alejandro Velasco

They have now the cash that they bought at the official rate, 10 to 1, but they can sell that $2,500 in cash at the black market rate for 100 to 1, 1,000 to 1.

It is a massive money-making machine that most people in the middle class take advantage of, including me.

I mean, it fluctuated over time, right?

It might've been 100 to one, or it might've been 1,000 to one at like the end of the Gadivi era.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean-

I guess I'm just like spilling it all open right now.

But so, you know, growing up, so we were, my family was a solidly middle-class family that was aspirational, right?

And so my parents put a lot of their money into making sure that my sister and I had really good schooling.

But that also meant that, you know, we didn't have like...

It was a fancy house.

We lived in a small apartment.

We did travel, but it was travel not to fancy destinations per se, but it was where we had friends and family.

And we also didn't go to fancy restaurants.

When I went back and I had access to all this money that I had, one of my things was like, I'm gonna go visit all those restaurants that as a kid we never got to go to.

Because now I can go there and eat like a king.

And I did.

Yes, but also, and this is I think a really crucial part, the influx of petrodollars is such that it could sustain both things at the same time.

I didn't feel at the time, and of course this is kind of ex post justification, I think, it didn't feel at the time like I'm milking off a corrupt system and...

this is really problematic.