(FORTUNE Magazine) – Why is Argentina such a mess? There are enough explanations floating around. But none of them really explains everything.

The 1991 decision to lock the value of the Argentine peso to the U.S. dollar, for example, gets a lot of the blame for the country's economic breakdown (and may have been abandoned by the time you read this). It is true that the dollar's (and thus the peso's) strength since the mid-1990s has priced Argentine exports out of many markets and hammered the country's economy. But Argentina went for the dollar link because it was the only way to kill off hyperinflation, which in 1989 had brought chaos similar to today's. And while the strong dollar has hurt exporters in the U.S. too, it hasn't led to anything like the economic turmoil faced by Argentina.

Then there's the argument that Argentina's politicians are at fault for saddling the country with debts it can't repay. Yes, for several years the government has been running steep deficits. But that's what happens in a recession, and Argentina has been stuck in a fierce one since 1998. What's more, Argentina's government debt (expressed as a percentage of its GDP) isn't any bigger than that of the U.S.

It may be that the one clear economic lesson to be drawn from the Argentine debacle is this: Life is tough in an emerging market. Argentina, unlike the U.S., Japan, or the new Euroland, can't borrow in its own currency or make its own monetary policy. That is to a large extent Argentina's own fault; decades of mismanagement impoverished what before World War II was one of the world's richest countries. But that doesn't make figuring out what to do next any easier.

--Justin Fox