The Press : Peso Sustains Losses in War With Pens

Down, down, down. Although the Mexican peso, under attack for weeks, appears to have stabilized, precariously, with Washington’s promise of up to $40 billion in loan guarantees, editorial cartoonists are still focused on the downside. Down Mexico way, prognostications are headed south.

From France to Canada to Costa Rica, the pen-wielding critics were accentuating the negative. That Big Sombrero of the emergency plan to bolster the peso in currency markets shrank like a cheap suit before the eyes of one wit. Another, not so droll, invited visitors to Sunny Mexico to see the Salinas Ruins, a rough comment on the economic policies of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

One of Mexico’s own, the cartoonist for the Monterrey Reforma, turned to references from the U.S. economic world, purporting to show Standard & Poor’s assessment for a little Mexico in an empty barrel: poor. Devaluation by pen.