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Who has lessons from the other two post-2000 cases of high-profile
desperation currency conversions, namely Argentina (leaving US$ peg in
2002) and Zimbabwe (losing its own currency in 2009)?
In Zim's case, I was there when it happened and the story is reasonably
straightforward, namely hyperinflation at what seemed like a gazillion %
at the worst, so that everyone had turned to (illegal) hard currency to
survive, namely trading in the South African rand and US$. By the time a
new government of national unity set up in February 2009, the transition
was effectively complete and the accounting gimmicks required to end the
zany 000's were quickly retired. But these aren't lessons for Greece.
Does Argentina have a better story?
And let's never forget Keynes on this matter, eh: "I sympathise,
therefore, with those who would minimise, rather than with those who
would maximise, economic entanglement between nations. Ideas, knowledge,
art, hospitality, travel - these are the things which should of their
nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is
reasonably and conveniently possible; and, above all, let finance be
primarily national." (The Yale Review, Summer 1933)
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