Money, Banking & Macroeconomics

On 27 July, more than 350,000 Haitians lost their authorization to work in the United States with the end of Temporary Protected Status. Diaspora remittances do more than feed families: they supply the country with the foreign currency on which its imports depend. This column puts the Haitian economy through a stress test and measures what the cut would cost.

A budget can finance a necessary war and, through the way it pays for it, weaken the very people it claims to defend. The amended budget of 2 June puts the bulk of the effort into security. This column does not question the spending: it questions how that spending is financed.

For years, the health of Haiti’s economy was read in the price of the dollar posted by the money changers, rather than in the public accounts or the production statistics. This column explains what the recent stability of that price means, and why the barometer is now unplugged.

A follow-up to “Inflationary Autarky”: ninety-two percent of the monthly pace of Haitian food inflation escapes the three external channels that the literature treats as decisive. This column draws the practical consequence for public decision-making.

For thirty-three months, from July 2023 to March 2026, the official price of a gallon of gasoline stayed frozen at 560 gourdes while Brent crude fell fifteen percent. The column shows, with data and regressions to back it up, that Haitian food inflation can now barely be explained by its usual external channels.

Financial literacy campaigns are multiplying, all the way up to the top of the central bank: patience, accumulation, the virtue of the long term. Meanwhile, games of chance thrive without meeting any obstacle. The column questions this public contradiction.

The price of the dollar serves as the thermometer for the entire Haitian economy. The column shows what this indicator really measures, what it conceals, and why reading it on its own leads to false diagnoses.