Mexico

The site of advanced Amerindian civilizations, Mexico came under Spanish rule for three centuries before achieving independence early in the 19th century. A devaluation of the peso in late 1994 threw Mexico into economic turmoil, triggering the worst recession in over half a century. The nation had been making an impressive recovery until the global financial crisis hit in late 2008. Ongoing economic and social concerns include low real wages, underemployment for a large segment of the population, inequitable income distribution, and few advancement opportunities for the largely Amerindian population in the impoverished southern states. The elections held in 2000 marked the first time since the 1910 Mexican Revolution that an opposition candidate - Vicente FOX of the National Action Party (PAN) - defeated the party in government, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). He was succeeded in 2006 by another PAN candidate Felipe CALDERON. In January 2009, Mexico assumed a nonpermanent seat on the UN Security Council for the 2009-10 term.

Economical characteristics

 * Currency: Peso (ISO code: MXN)
 * Central bank discount rate: NA%
 * Commercial banks lending rate: 4.9% (31 December 2009)
 * Stock of money (M1): $115.9 billion (31 December 2009 est.)
 * Quasi money (with M1 makes M2): $146.8 billion (31 December 2009 est.)

Notable events:

 * Banking crisis: 1883, 1893, February 1908, 1929, 1981-1982, 1982-1991, October 1992, 1994-1997
 * Years in inflation: 11.1% (share of years 1821-2009 with annual inflation above 20 per cent per annum)
 * Public default: 1828-1830, 1833-1841, 1844-1850, 1854-1864, 1866-1885, 1914-1922, 1928-1942, 1982-1990 (external), 1850, 1928-1932, 1982 (domestic)

Links

 * Mexico on Wikipedia
 * Central bank of Mexico
 * Country profile (pdf) from the Enterprise Studies page (part of the The World Bank Group)
 * Studies from the Library of Congress (1986-1998)
 * BBC country profile
 * Hugo Salinas-Price on the Nature of Money and Why Silver Should Be Legal Mexican Currency by Scott Smith, May 2010
 * Mexico's failed war against the drug gangs by Luis Hernández Navarro, May 2011
 * Another Plea to End the Insanity by Stephen Mauzy, June 2011, about the effects of the drug war on Mexico