South America’s Make-Believe Money Is Either Dangerous or Irrelevant
Ideologically driven plans by Argentina and Brazil for a common currency fly in the face of history and economic and political reality.
Inflated expectations.
Photographer: Anita Pouchard Serra/Bloomberg via Getty Images
When the presidents of Brazil and Argentina announced at a regional summit in Buenos Aires that they would start planning for a common currency, you could almost hear the chortling from lower Manhattan to the Washington headquarters of the International Monetary Fund.
“It’s not far from El Salvador adopting Bitcoin,” said Kenneth Rogoff, who became chief economist at the IMF just in time to witness the macro-devaluation of the Argentine peso in 2001. Olivier Blanchard, who held the post a few years later, went simply for “insane.”