New York Times
June 20, 2011
As an economist who lived through the Argentine crisis nearly a decade ago, I am distressed by the trouble in the euro zone because it has many of the same ingredients that led to the Argentine debacle.
The International Monetary Fund's mistaken prescriptions (yet again) and the European Central Bank’s intransigence leave Greece no option but to default and exit the euro zone. A brief recap of the Argentine experience may shed some light on where Greece is inevitably headed.
The Argentine crisis was the consequence of a decade of I.M.F.- and World Bank-sponsored free market economic reforms, which included pegging the peso to the U.S. dollar on a 1 to 1 exchange rate. This all but eliminated the ability to conduct independent monetary policy -- much like the euro arrangement today. All barriers to trade and financial flows were removed, and all state enterprises were privatized. The 1994 privatization of its social security system alone explains Argentina's explosive debt accumulation between 1994 and 2001 and the resulting default.
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