Heading into Argentina's legislative elections this month, commentary about the country's economic and financial prospects was growing increasingly pessimistic. With a significant amount of foreign debt coming due next year, the conventional wisdom was that an exchange-rate-based stabilization program - letting the currency depreciate by less than the inflation rate to push inflation down - had led to a massively overvalued currency and an external deficit that was bound to precipitate a crisis. But having written a book on currency crises in emerging markets, and having followed Argentine...
