I lived here through the Menem years. As I recall, Menem wanted the constitution changed to allow him to have a third term. I believe he spent heavily in the provinces to get support for a constitutional change. Also one of the deterrents to attracting investment here is labour law which strongly favours employees, results in very high indemnisation costs and forces many employers to pay employees under the table. When De La Rua took office the economy was unraveling and provinces could not pay their bills, so they began printing scrip which was a way of getting around the convertability law but must have been illegal. These measures were to avoid dealing with fundamental problems such as the high number of government employees and expenditures. If dollarisation were to be implemented it would have to be done with fundamental reforms and it could not be done overnight.
