A Step Towards Financial Autonomy

Even before Olaf Scholz met newly re-elected President Lula in Brasília last week, the latter had visited neighbouring Argentina, where he floated the idea of creating a common currency union for the two countries. The international response? Shaking heads. ‘It’s a terrible idea’, tweeted Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate in economics. In the German weekly Die Zeit, Thomas Fischermann wrote about a ‘dream money of the South’. So, was the announcement of a common currency for southern Latin America just talk?