My friend, Hugo Salinas Price is on a mission to get Mexico to adopt a silver coin as legal currency. It's a mission I endorse 100%. His plea to the government in Mexico was written in Spanish but I asked Hugo for a translation. In English, please consider A Silver Coin that is Money To Calm the National Tantrum in Mexico.
When a baby is having a tantrum because he’s tired or sleepy, the best thing to get baby to forget what bothers him is by distracting him with anything you may have at hand: a pair of glasses, a rattle, or a bunch of keys. The Mexican people are tired and angry, and they are having a great tantrum. It is impossible to correct or eliminate in short order the causes of their anger. What we need is to distract the angry population with some good news that will catch the popular attention and imagination. For nine years I attempted to convince the Federal Congress of Mexico to approve legislation that would monetize the “Libertad” silver ounce, which is minted by the Mexican Mint; the coin would then have value for a given number of Mexican pesos, by means of a quote on the part of our Central Bank. The quote would be a floating quote, somewhat higher than the value of the silver ounce on the international markets, and would increase with increases in the value of silver on the markets, but never fall (in Mexican pesos value) if the price of silver should fall. My efforts did not meet with success, but the project gathered quite a bit of support in the Congress, both on the part of Federal Congressmen as well as on the part of Federal Senators. An insignificant dispute between the PRI and the Leftist PRD caused the PRD to withdraw its support, which the PRI required to pass the legislation. ....
Hugo's Silver Currency Idea Explained For a detailed explanation of how Hugo's silver currency proposal would work, please see Silver, liquid and illiquid, the 'modified open mint' and gold & silver as parallel monetary systems by Hugo Salinas Price. Role of Gold in Trade For a discussion of trade imbalances and the role of gold, please see Hugo Salinas Price and Michael Pettis on the Trade Imbalance Dilemma; Gold's Honest Discipline Revisited Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
