Several factors contributed to the deterioration of the macroeconomic environment in 1982. External interest rates rose, the availability of external credit decreased, and terms of trade worsened in the wake of the escalation of oil prices. This put enormous pressure on the Chilean peso—which had been under a fixed exchange rate scheme since 1979—. This regime broke down dramatically and spread to almost all business sectors, given large FX exposures, and heavily leveraged financial conglomerates. All these factors interacted with one another to become an outright banking crisis. But, whatever the causes of the crisis, unsustainable debt was mostly explained by internal vulnerabilities: inappropriate regulation, weak supervision, and lack of attention to excessive credit growth, leveraged on a fixed exchange rate scheme. Although the first aid took the form of “emergency loans” by the Central Bank to commercial banks, during the following year conditions deteriorated rapidly enough to lead to the intervention of 11 banking institutions. Another 8 were added in 1983, including the two largest banks in the system. In all, the intervened institutions represented 60% of total credit. All directors and executives of these institutions were, removed from their posts, and replaced by provisional administrators. Measures to fight the crisis aimed at the liquidation of non-viable banking entities, improvement of balance sheets of viable entities through the purchase of deteriorated portfolios, and the reduction of financial burden of bank borrowers through debt reprogramming and preferential exchange rates. In 1985, this extended to the recapitalization of the intervened banks, through the so-called “popular capitalism” program.
In particular, I would like to thank Alejandro Jara, Markus Kirchner, Andrés Fernández, Victoria Nuguer, and Liliana Rojas-Suarez for setting up the agenda, and to Tomás Gómez, Paloma Navarro and María José Reyes for the excellent organization of the event. I wish everyone a very fruitful discussion and a pleasant stay in Santiago. ***  References Espinosa, C. and J. Fernández (2015). “Comparación Histórica de Resultados en el Sector Corporativo en Chile”. Economía Chilena, Vol. 18, No. 1. Agosin, M., G. Crespi, and L. Letelier (1999). "Explanations for the Increase in Saving in Chile", in C. Reinhart (ed. ), Accounting for Saving – Financial Liberalization, Capital Flows and Growth in Latin America and Europe, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, D. C.  Page 5 of 5