Currency woes: Argentina faces devaluation

BUENOS AIRES: Recession-hit Argentines are flocking to buy dollars, nervous over the government’s latest debt default and pressure from the business community to devalue the peso for the second time this year. Officially, a dollar is worth 8.42 Argentine pesos, but it takes 14.26 pesos to buy one on the black market, a gap that only shows signs of widening. President Cristina Kirchner has tried to convince Argentines to stop hoarding greenbacks and spend their pesos instead. “You have to invest in things you can touch and see. The rest is just fairytales,” she said recently. But her appeals have largely fallen on deaf ears in a country that still bears the scars of its 2001 financial crisis, when the government froze $70 billion in deposits in a bid to stop a run on the banks. Limited to withdrawals of $250 a day, Argentines flooded the streets, venting their wrath by banging pots and pans.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 14^th, 2014.

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