Four months into office, Argentine President Javier Milei has pulled off a critical feat in a country long ravaged by runaway inflation: He stabilized the currency.
That was a good episode but it is also very outdated at this point since it is over 7 months old now. The reason nobody was buying it was indeed because the government had set a rate that was completely out of whack with its actual value and they implemented exchange controls to stem the outflow of foreign exchange reserves to put up the appearance of legitimacy. Milei removed the capital controls though and floated the currency. It was expected to free fall and it has. Milei is a far right nutjob but a pegged currency to encourage investment followed by exchange controls has never worked out for Argentina.
Planet Money has a great episode explaining this. They’re manipulating the value of the Argentinian Peso and no one’s buying it, quite literally.
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/22/1197954122/argentina-peso-inflation-milei
That was a good episode but it is also very outdated at this point since it is over 7 months old now. The reason nobody was buying it was indeed because the government had set a rate that was completely out of whack with its actual value and they implemented exchange controls to stem the outflow of foreign exchange reserves to put up the appearance of legitimacy. Milei removed the capital controls though and floated the currency. It was expected to free fall and it has. Milei is a far right nutjob but a pegged currency to encourage investment followed by exchange controls has never worked out for Argentina.