The Mexican Peso Crisis

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The Mexican crisis in 1994/1995, also known as Tequila crisis or Mexican peso crisis, was generally caused by the sudden devaluation of the peso at the end of 1994.
Although Mexican economy was in relative good shape, the ability of Mexican government in absorbing shocks was hampered by two decades of increasing spending, a hyperinflation from 1985-1993 and debt loads. Consequently, political shocks in 1994 hit Mexican economy hard.
At the beginning of the year, Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a revolutionary leftist group, started off a rebellion in Chiapas, the southernmost state in Mexico. Only a few months later, the ruling party’s presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, was assassinated on March 23. These incidences made the nation’s political future look less certain to investors, which lead to massive capital outflows. This tendency was negatively supported by the rise of interest rates in the USA, which made US Treasury bills relatively more attractive. …show more content…

This is represented by the loss in international reserves. The impact of the presidential candidate’s assassination in March 1994 can be directly seen from the loss of international reserves by 11 billion USD. A consistent conclusion can be taken from the exchange rate trend. Mexico had a fixed exchange rate system which let the exchange rate vary in a given exchange rate peg only. The political shocks made the exchange rate depreciating and leveling off at the upper limit of the target band. As Mexico was running out of dollars at the end of 1994, government suddenly decided on December 20 to devalue the peso. Technically, it widened the target band by increasing the upper limit by

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