What a vexing puzzle Argentina is. Once a land of opportunity, as promising as the US, it has instead been mired in relative stagnation. There are those who say its only case for being in the Group of 20 is its superior knowledge of serial sovereign defaults.

To be fair, that is not the whole truth. In the 1990s Argentina was a paragon of sound money, its currency board fixing the money supply to its stock of dollars. Tying itself to the mast did wonders while the sailing was smooth, but was also a death trap. In the wake of the Asian financial crisis Argentina was sunk by capital flight and by an uncompetitive exchange rate when other countries devalued.