As Argentines dump pesos for dollars, president seeks to mop up excess

Buenos Aires

PRESIDENT Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner can't keep Argentines from dumping their pesos for dollars. So she's trying a different tack: draining a record amount of local currency out of the economy instead.

This year, the central bank has removed 97.2 billion pesos (S$15 billion) from Argentina's financial system, the most on a net basis since at least 2003. Relative to inflation, the number of pesos is now increasing at the slowest rate on record.