Centennial Precious Metals, Inc: Serving Gold Coin & Bullion Investors Since 1973
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Around the early 1900's both Americans and Europeans alike used the phrase "rich as an Argentine" to describe an individual of substantial wealth -- in 1914, only Great Britain was more urbanized, and by 1929 only Great Britain had more cars per capita. Argentina was considered to be one of the ten wealthiest nations in the world in terms of per capita income.

Not more than 20 years later, a series of poorly executed policies -- nationalization of industries, expansion of state services and substantial overseas borrowing -- as well as a period of bad leadership began to ruin the economic prosperity of the country.

Unable to finance its spending, the government of Argentina opted to attempt inflating its way out of its obligations. This caused an astronomical inflation factor of 2.1 billion times original prices between 1976 and 1991. To give an example, a single one of the 5 pesos gold coins now holds a modern purchasing-power equivalent which is beyond 500 trillion of the original, nominal pesos that denominated the coin. Once a status of wealth and prosperity, this massive inflation has eroded Argentina's per capita rank in the world to the less-enviable likes of Jamaica and Belarus.