Forget the Dollars

Said Economic Czar Miguel Miranda last week: "The future of Argentina, as I see it, is very brilliant, because our products are bound to give us all we need." At such talk many an Argentine businessman winced. All around were signs that the economy of the country was sick and getting sicker week by week.

Meat exports were declining alarmingly. Because the government had dillydallied with new export rules, trading in hides and skins had all but stopped. Miranda had priced linseed oil right out of the export market. To save its vanishing dollar exchange, the government was even making it hard for immigrants to send money home to Europe (contrary to the immigration treaties with Italy and Spain).

There were other signs of economic exhaustion. Government statistical reports were months late, as if functionaries were afraid to let the world know the score. Though the last cost-of-living index appeared in March, labor argued that living costs had doubled in a year, and was out for higher wages. The last reliable official reports on foreign trade were for April.

At the Central Bank last week, importers and exporters found it almost impossible to learn where the country stood on the foreign exchange transactions, and no wonder. The bank had no head. Bank President Orlando Maroglio, outspoken foe of Miranda's high-price policies, had finally given up his fight with the economic czar (TIME, Oct.11), and resigned.

In token of victory over Maroglio, bumbling Czar Miranda immediately announced a new economic policy. The nub of it: forget about dollars. Said he: "To try to get more dollars out of the U.S. is merely a waste of time." What Argentina should do, he told a meeting of provincial finance ministers, was to buy outside the dollar circuit, as it was already doing in the case of newsprint (from Finland) and of oil (from the sterling area). As for the U.S., it was buying Argentine products at the rate of $200 million a year; henceforth Argentina would limit its buying of U.S. goods to that same figure. Cried Miranda: "We are going to play our role of buyer to the hilt."

To the hilt, as things stood, was not much buying--or much selling either.

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