Category: Argentina
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Monday, September 28, 2020
It’s Time to Dump Argentina’s Peso / Currencies / Argentina
By: Steve_H_Hanke
In addition to facing an acute COVID-19 crisis, Argentina’s deadbeat economy is collapsing, and, as usual, the inflation noose is around Argentines’ necks. Argentina’s official inflation rate for August 2020 is 40.70 percent per year. And, for once, Argentina’s official rate is fairly close to the rate that I calculate each day using high-frequency data and purchasing-power-parity theory, a methodology that has long proved its worth when compared with official statistics. Today, I measure Argentina’s annual inflation rate at 37 percent, but probably not for long — the noose is generally followed by the trapdoor.
As Milton Friedman put it in his 1987 New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics entry “Quantity Theory of Money” (QTM), “The conclusion (of the QTM) is that substantial changes in prices or nominal income are almost always the result of changes in the nominal supply of money.” The income form of the QTM states that: MV=Py, where M is the money supply, V is the velocity of money, P is the price level, and y is real GDP (national income).
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Tuesday, June 09, 2020
Argentina, the World’s Biggest Deadbeat Economy / Economics / Argentina
By: Steve_H_Hanke
Borrow, spend, default; lather, rinse, repeat.
On May 22, Argentina failed to meet interest payments on its sovereign debt. With that, the country tipped into default on its $65 billion mountain of foreign debt. If that’s not enough, Argentina’s provinces are addicted to debt and are buried in it, too. The province of Buenos Aires is already in default, and Cordoba, La Rioja, Salta, Rio Negro, and Chubut have also indicated that they plan to restructure their debt as well.
This is not the first time that Argentina has stiffed its creditors. No, it’s the ninth time. And it’s not Argentina’s largest default, either. Indeed, Argentina set the world’s default record when it defaulted on $95 billion in external debt in 2001. The bottom line is clear: Argentina is hands down the world’s biggest deadbeat.
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Monday, March 18, 2019
Argentina's Peso, Nothing But Trouble / Currencies / Argentina
By: Steve_H_Hanke
This week, Argentina released its February inflation statistics. Inflation spiked, again. Indeed, the official annual inflation rate jumped to 51.3%/yr.
While this spike caught most observers off balance, it didn’t surprise me. Each day, I accurately measure Argentina’s inflation using high-frequency data and Purchasing Power Parity theory. By my measure, Argentina’s annual inflation rate is 100%/yr (see the accompanying chart). That’s nearly double the official rate reported for the end of February.
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Saturday, September 29, 2018
The US Dollar Not the IMF Can Save Argentina / Economics / Argentina
By: Steve_H_Hanke
The International Monetary Fund’s $50 billion agreement with Argentina is failing. Earlier this month a scheduled $3 billion payment was postponed while the IMF and the country’s government continued to haggle in Buenos Aires. The peso extended its precipitous fall against the greenback.
The backdrop to this misery is President Mauricio Macri’s weak reform program combined with the IMF’s misdiagnosis of Argentina’s problems. Mr. Macri replaced the left-wing populist Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in December 2015. He inherited a rapidly growing public sector, huge fiscal deficits due to massive subsidies for key products, annual inflation of more than 30%, capital controls, and a dual exchange-rate system. With a slim majority in the National Congress, and facing midterm elections in October 2017, Mr. Macri adopted a gradualist approach to reform.
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Wednesday, July 11, 2018
An Elixir for Argentina’s Fiscal Dysfunction / Currencies / Argentina
By: Steve_H_Hanke
Argentina and its peso are in trouble, again. By officially replacing the peso with the U.S. dollar, Argentina’s peso nightmare would end. But, in a country in which fiscal fiddlers know many tricks, some fiscal rules must also be added to the prescription.
Dollarization should impose a hard budget constraint on Argentina. Under dollarization, which exists in 33 countries, hard budget constraints are imposed because dollarized countries must finance government spending by taxing or borrowing in either domestic or international bond markets. They cannot finance government expenditures by using a central bank, which issues a domestic currency. As a result, fiscal deficits, when they occur, tend to be relatively small. But, there has been one noteworthy, unusual case: Zimbabwe. This case merits our attention.
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Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Argentina Should Scrap the Peso and Dollarize / Currencies / Argentina
By: Steve_H_Hanke
On July 9th, Argentina will celebrate its 202nd birthday. The biggest spoiler during the festivities will be the beleaguered peso. It’s not the first time the peso has been a spoiler. Since its founding, Argentina has been burdened with numerous economic crises. Most can be laid at the feet of domestic mismanagement and currency problems (read: currency collapses). To list but a few of these crises: 1876, 1890, 1914, 1930, 1952, 1958, 1967, 1975, 1985, 1989, 2001, and 2018(?).
By the time its 100th birthday rolled around, Argentina had experienced only three major economic crises. Alas, the next 102 years have been much more eventful, with eight currency crises, not counting 2018.
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Sunday, April 25, 2010
Argentina From Economic Depression to Recession to Resuscitation to Debt Retirement / Economics / Argentina
By: Daniel_Bruno
After nearly a decade of depression, recession and resurrection, Argentina wants to retire its remaining unpaid debt at about 50 cents on the dollar and rejoin world financial markets.
It all goes well, Argentine debt and the peso could be a very good investment.
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Wednesday, November 07, 2007
MACRO MUSINGS: Argentina's New Peronist President, US to Follow? - Tres Mujeres / Politics / Argentina
By: Justice_Litle
Nothing is built on stone. All is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.
– Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine writer
CRISTINA! CRISTINA! CRISTINA! the headlines chanted. On October 28th, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner became Argentina's newly elected President. She did so with the blessing of her husband, Nestor Kirchner… who also happens to be Argentina's outgoing President.
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