Argentina finished seventh in global misery ranking

Argentina ranked seventh in 2020 world misery ranking which was carried out for the second year in a row and which measures the main indices of the economy. It was already in second place in 2019. Venezuela, again first.

In English, the Hanke’s annual misery index (HAMI) that public nationalreview.com assesses two aspects of a country’s reality: misery against happiness. For this, it takes into account the figures for unemployment, inflation, real GDP growth and the bank lending rate. Steve H. Hanke is professor of economics at the University of Baltimore, Maryland, United States, and one of the fathers of dollarization in Ecuador.

Again, Venezuela tops the rankings due to poor data in all variables. Meanwhile, Argentina broke away from the summit due to the inclusion of many countries in the list, which rose from 95 to 156.

In Argentina, the elements questioned are worrying: unemployment at 11%, drop in GDP of 9.9% in 2020, inflation of 36.1% last year and interest rate on personal loans around 54% (data BCRA).

March inflation hit 4.8% and hit its highest level in 18 months

This year, Hanke didn’t give a detailed breakdown of Argentina, but in his previous 2019 data report he said: Argentina reached the second most miserable place after another peso crisis. Since its founding Argentina has suffered many economic crises. Most of them are at the foot of mismanagement and currency problems ( lase: currency collapse) .Such crises occurred in 1876, 1890, 1914, 1930, 1952, 1958, 1967, 1975, 1985, 1989, 2001, 2018 and 2019, to name a few . “

At the other extreme, the happiest countries were Guyana, Taiwan, Qatar, Japan, China and South Korea.

Dollarization

Steve Hanke was an advisor to the Minister of Finance on the dollarization plan in Ecuador. He is recognized for his work as a “reformer” in emerging markets. He has also worked as a consultant in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Hanke is passionate about the analysis of monetary policy: his ideology is influenced by Milton Friedman, the American economist who received the Nobel Prize in 1976.

In 2020, Hanke claims that theThe only solution to Argentina’s economic problems is to dollarize the currency.

“People want to get rid of pesos and of those who can move to Uruguay. People even buy bitcoin. If I were a doctor, I would tell the patient that their problem is pesos. We must kill the peso. Weight is poison, cancer. Argentina could be the best country in Latin America if it got rid of it. “, open