This dynamic combination of factors has garnered Beijing, among other things, vast hard currency reserves.

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There must be full data disclosure on Soviet hard currency reserves and deposits, including strategic gold reserves, to be independently verified.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Trying to put Moscow on the dole

Hard currency reserves had vanished, international trade had all but stopped.

ECONOMIST: Yegor Gaidar

Under such a regime no local currency would be issued unless it had 100% backing from hard currency reserves, such as the dollar or the euro.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Yet Argentina's experience provides clear evidence that even currency boards, where the rate is fixed by law, and where the domestic currency has to be backed by hard-currency reserves, are not immune from crises.

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For one thing, Japan has a good stockpile of hard-currency reserves, and its people are willing to save domestically at virtually zero interest rates.

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After raising interest rates to 150% to stop a run on the rouble, the central bank's head said that the tide had turned and that hard-currency reserves were being replenished.

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Argentina's inflexible currency-board scheme not only pegs the peso at par to the dollar but limits the money supply to the level of hard-currency reserves, in effect turning monetary policy over to the United States' Federal Reserve.

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But with their foreign-currency reserves all but exhausted, other Asian countries would be hard-pressed to follow suit.

ECONOMIST: East Asia