Tequila crisis

Tequila crisis is the popular term for the peso -Crisis that Mexico 1994 / 1995 went through and into an economic crisis culminated. The term originally comes from a work by the Mexican writer and diplomat Octavio Paz .

This crisis began in December 1994 with a currency crisis , as the Mexican government was no longer able to maintain the fixed peso rate against the US dollar , which led to a general crisis of confidence. This resulted in a massive withdrawal of foreign capital. The lack of capital then brought the Mexican companies into trouble and so the currency crisis ended in a general economic crisis.

The political instability caused by a Zapatistas revolt in Chiapas , the murders of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio and the head of the ruling PRI party , as well as the interest rate hike in the USA that Mexico cannot influence , which still honored the flight of capital from Mexico, intensified the crisis. This massive flight of capital from the Mexican currency area led to a currency devaluation of up to 50 percent within a few days. This has resulted in a dramatic increase in the cost of borrowing from banks that had borrowed from liberalized US markets, increasing the level of bad credit and making banks bankrupt and largely foreign-owned. After the banking crisis, Mexican companies therefore had to borrow from foreign lenders, as far as they could. The state budget was heavily burdened by the high-interest government bonds in the now foreign banks.

To counter the financial crisis , US President Bill Clinton announced on January 31, 1995 that he was seeking an international aid package. For the United States, he approved a share of US $ 20 billion to the neighbors. As a result, in February 1995 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank gave Mexico an aid package of $ 47.8 billion , which further increased foreign debt but prevented the big banks and mutual funds from collapsing. The former managing director of the IMF, Michel Camdessus, described this as " the first financial crisis of the 21st century ", which is enormously different from the previous crises since the 1980s.

literature

Heike Joebges: Transmission mechanisms of currency crises. Using the example of the tequila crisis (1994/95) and the Asian crisis (1997) . Herbert Utz Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-8316-0659-5
Jose De Luna Martinez: Globalization and Financial Crises - Lessons from Mexico and South Korea, Diss. 2002

Individual evidence

↑ $ 47.5 billion for Mexico. FAZ , February 1, 1995, accessed January 30, 2012 .

[1] $ 47.5 billion for Mexico. FAZ , February 1, 1995, accessed January 30, 2012 .