Hugo Salinas Price, hailed as a modern-day Johnny Appleseed of silver money,and a self-made Mexican billionaire, has stated before that there are only a few significant lawmakers standing in the way of a bill that would reintroduce silver coin alongside the peso.

Salinas Price has recently suggested political re-monetization of silver coin in a nation that so desperately needs to reconsider its contribution to the modern age, Greece. The drachma was the first coin of international trade--the owl, commonly exchanged beginning around 2,500 years ago.

In Revolutionary Policy and Saving in Silver, we detailed how Salinas Price travelled to Guatemala, speaking with leading businessmen on the benefits of circulating silver coin. In that article we quoted him describing the technical limitations in Mexico of forward progress.

So in Mexico, just as in these united States, political parties of all self-identifying stripes are one-and-the-same, in support of the paper printers and opposed to freedom of choice for their citizens. In Mexico, the choices this Sunday were boiled down to the following:

• Eduardo Pena Nieto of the (PRI) Institutional Revolution Party
• Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party
• Josefina Vazquez Mota of the National Action Party, the ruling party

The candidates, as they are listed above, are pictured below, from left to right:

The winner yesterday was Pena Nieto of PRI (left), ending the 12-year break Mexicans had from the party that ruled over them for 70 years, from 1929-2000. During that time the party became known to the people as socialist, taking foreign-owned oil industry assets by force, eliminating the fair unit of account--the silver coin--and driving the bus that ultimately ended with more than 52 million of 110 million Mexicans living in poverty today. Twelve million Mexicans live in extreme poverty, marked by a lack of clean water access.

The PRI’s years in power were marked by “theft and devaluation,” said Maria Etchegaray, 82, as she lined up to vote in Mexico City yesterday. When asked, Mexican citizens said that none of the candidate choices put forth would allow the Salinas Price bill to move forward in congress. Mexicans may remember the devaluation that cut the savings of Mexicans in half overnight one late night in 1994. Although they can not legally transact in silver coin again, they can exchange the paper banknotes (called pesos in this instance) for real money, in order to save.

PRI ran on a simple platform, with one of the main points being to “stop the rise in food prices.” How that squares with another promise, to “give social security to all Mexicans,” is beyond comprehension. Social security, as we see today, is funded by printing. As printing is the determinant of peso supply, how expanding the currency supply to fund social security will increase buying power at the grocery store is left unexplained, making both statements appear to be nothing more than a politician's hollow words.

For all Americans, north, south and central, it seems that new hope will spring in another place. For now, even though the election failed to afford the Mexican people the opportunity to use real money, we can still save privately in coin made of silver and gold.

http://wealthcycles.com/blog/2012/07/02/pena-nieto-mexico%E2%80%99s-silver-policy-unchanged-under-new-president