Argentine President Candidate Urges Peso-Gold Link, Herald Says

bloomberg ^ | 03/13/03 | Claire Shoesmith

[AdamSelene235]

Buenos Aires, March 13 (Bloomberg) -- Nestor Kirchner, seeking to become president of Argentina, will try to return the country to a monetary system where the peso is backed by gold reserves, the Buenos Aires Herald said, citing Kirchner's economics adviser.

[AdamSelene235]

Linking currency to gold is explicitly forbidden by the IMF. Sounds like a good reason to try it.

[headsonpikes]

A harbinger.

[IMHO]

They need to jettison the IMF anyway. Countries that rely on IMF loans invariably get screwed. I like Argentina, and if it had a stable gold-backed currency, it'd be in an excellent position. It was one of the most economically powerful countries in the world at the dawn of the 2Oth century. Maybe they learned their lesson and are on their way back.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[BfloGuy]

I'd love to see them do it.

If they had the discipline to stick with it, it would be an earthshaking development and probably a pretty good one for the Argentinian economy.

And one might dream that it would lead us back to the truth as well.

[plusone]

The IMF is only there to guarantee that Western banks won't get left holding the bag. Their solution to a debt crisis is to lend more money. That doesn't solve the underlying economic problems of a country, but it allows the country to continue making debt repayments to Western Banks. Basically, what they are doing is transfering the risk of default from the Banks to taxpayers. I wish Argentina well with this experiment, but I doubt they will have the discipline to pull it off. Gold standard forces discipline onto politicians...they can no longer buy votes with other people's (people from the future) money.