Menem wanted a quick fix for the desperate situation he inherited - the lingering effects of the dictatorship's foreign debt bubble a decade earlier, which by 1989 had become a full-blown crisis.
The problem was that his quick fix wasn't sustainable.
Argentina has a perpetual dollar problem: lacking large-scale mineral resources (like the kind Chile or oil-rich countries have) it doesn't earn enough to pay for all its import needs, satisfy local demand for dollars (almost an obsession), and service large foreign debts.
But Menem's (actually Cavallo's) convertibility was predicated on precisely that: borrowing all the dollars needed to finance all that and keep a 1-to-1 exchange rate.
For Argentina, impossible.
When the country's access to dollars dried up, convertibility collapsed as well (the much-publicized 2001 crisis); Macri ran into that same wall in 2018 - though at least Menem accomplished serious growth for 8 years while the dollars rolled in (Macri? almost nothing).
Thanks for reading, Judi, and for the photos - which capture his flamboyant personality.
Menem's fondness for fast cars - and faster women - is, of course, common knowledge. But his social skills were actually the most interesting thing about him.
The elder George Bush, years after leaving office, revealed that he once mentioned to him that Syria's Hafez Assad wouldn't budge on a certain sticking point in negotiations Bush was brokering with Israel (which, you'll recall, had seized the fertile Golan heights from Syria - never to return them).
"Can I talk to him?" Menem asked.
"Sure - if you think it'll help," Bush said, incredulously.
Assad called Bush back a short while later - and they had a deal!
Years later, in 2000, Menem was invited to a book launching party for soccer great Diego Maradona - but there was a problem:
Maradona, who turned 40 that day, was in a foul mood - and wouldn't leave the hotel room. The guests (some 1,300+ people) were beginning to leave.
"Can I try?" Menem asked in that low-key tone of his.
"Sure!" the publisher said (no one else dared - given how temperamental Maradona got when in one of his moods)
And wouldn't you know it, a few minutes later there they were: both coming down the glass elevator, waving and all smiles.
"See?" Menem told the astounded publisher, "I told you I'd bring him down."
And that's how he was: truly gifted at smoothing ruffled feathers and solving spur-of-the-moment crises - but never a
sustainable solution.
To be fair, those are always hard.
Thanks again, Judi.
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