What sort of madness would lead anyone to want to share a currency with Argentina of all places? No offense intended, but it’s one of the most aggressively mismanaged economies in South America. (Venezuela obviously is the winner in that category.)
In the 90s, Lula and his party founded the São Paulo Forum, a conference for latin american left wing political parties. Basically a socialist gathering where they scheme on how to turn latin america into the 21st century soviet union. I'm not exaggerating, I have videos from those days of Lula, our current president, openly saying his plan was to install socialism in Brazil, and to do it slowly so that nobody would even notice it was happening.
All of the socialist leaders of these countries are his literal buddies. They fuck up the economy of their own countries with their socialist idiocy and then come to us for money. And what does Lula do? He gives it to them. Just like that. Well, he lends the money to them, but they don't really pay it back so yeah. A few days ago I saw a video of him discoursing about the Venezuela guy whose name I don't even care to remember, how he'd come see him and wouldn't leave until he got the "plata". Then he'd say that since we're such a "strong country" we had to help him. With taxpayer money.
It is important to note that Brazilian economy's minister said there is no plan to implement a common currency[0].
This declaration came after Argentinian ambassor said, in a visit to Brazil, that there were plans to create it.
It seems to me that this is something that Argentina wants, while Brazil has no practical interest in it.
Worth mentioning that Argentina is a country that is dealing with deep financial crisis and heavy inflation and a common currency could help to reduce inflation. Brazil had similar problems through the 80's and 90's.
> It is important to note that Brazilian economy's minister said there is no plan to implement a common currency
Yeah sure. He just backpedaled after all the negative public reaction. Don't doubt it for a minute.
> It seems to me that this is something that Argentina wants, while Brazil has no practical interest in it.
Obviously.
> Worth mentioning that Argentina is a country that is dealing with deep financial crisis and heavy inflation and a common currency could help to reduce inflation. Brazil had similar problems through the 80's and 90's.
> The initial focus will be on how a new currency, which Brazil suggests calling the “sur” (south), could boost regional trade and reduce reliance on the US dollar, officials told the Financial Times. It would at first run in parallel with the Brazilian real and Argentine peso.
That last part is pretty important. Both countries have a history of severe inflation. Circulating a new currency alongside the old seems like a pretty baldfaced attempt at inflation without having to admit it. It beggars belief that either country would retire its national currency given the deflationary shock that would create.
Presumably this would be implemented through some sort of ERM/ECU-like mechanism during a transition period?
I’m generally in favor of the European project, and think the last 75+ years of peace (ex Ukraine) speak for itself. And I understand the intellectual underpinning of why the Euro is a vital component of that. But I also can’t shake the feeling that it’s a bad idea for the vast majority of countries to forfeit their financial sovereignty.
And in this case, this looks a lot to me like tying two rocks together and hoping that they float.
> It beggars belief that either country would retire its national currency given the deflationary shock that would create.
Believe it. Brazil has had more national currencies than I care to remember. If you search "Brazil" on HN, you'll find the top post is about the creation of the real and how the government had to essentially trick the population into believing that this time it wasn't going to turn into worthless paper.
There are other latin american countries that are even worse.
> The attractions of a new common currency are most obvious for Argentina, where annual inflation is approaching 100 per cent as the central bank prints money to fund spending.
Confused about this one. If the central bank continues to print so much money to fund spending, isn't it obviously attractive for them to keep doing it? Unless their central bank has gone crazy and can't be stopped by any other means.
> Did the governments bother trying and evaluate the popular support for such idea?
They couldn't care less about such things. In 2005, a gun control referendum took place and 63% voted against disarmament. It didn't matter, they still pushed disarmament into law.
> The Euro has been a failure for everybody except Germany
That's the design. The whole point of such a "currency" is to transfer whatever economic strength Brazil has to the other failed economies of south america. Socialize the losses of Argentina and Venezuela among the brazilian population.
"guay" means "cool" in Spanish so my mind did the trick and imagine my confusion when reading this "wasn't supposed to include one of the cool countries as well"
I'm Brazilian and I can only say NOOOO! This is the worst idea and will be used to fund the socialist regimes os South America, most of them real or de facto dictatorships.
This idea doesn't have population support and it marks the end of Brazil's economy.