Embattled Argentinian President Mauricio Macri has been scrambling to shore up his country’s struggling currency since the IMF’s executive board finally approved a record – and expanded – $57 billion bailout loan with the explicit condition that the country’s central bank refrain from using that money to support the Argentine peso.
But as Argentina’s battered economy has continued to deteriorate, the peso’s value has eroded dramatically as the central banks pushed , cementing its status as one of the worst-performing currencies of 2018, as traders ignored a series of frantic rate hikes that brought the overnight interest rate in the country to a staggering 60% (which appears somewhat more appealing next to the country’s annualized inflation rate of 40%).