This dynamic combination of factors has garnered Beijing, among other things, vast hard currency reserves.
There must be full data disclosure on Soviet hard currency reserves and deposits, including strategic gold reserves, to be independently verified.
Hard currency reserves had vanished, international trade had all but stopped.
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.
The republics agreed to discuss division of the Soviet Union's foreign debt and gold, diamond and hard currency reserves at their next meeting, in three months.
Despite Cuba's economic failure, Castro has the capability to finance special projects through his network of criminal enterprises and billions of dollars of hard currency reserves he maintains in hidden foreign accounts.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But with their foreign-currency reserves all but exhausted, other Asian countries would be hard-pressed to follow suit.
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