The administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner recently devalued the peso and relaxed some capital controls in an effort to preserve the country’s dwindling foreign reserves. The government is hoping that these steps will ease some of the pressure on the currency, which does not float freely against the dollar. But Argentina needs to do a lot more to address inflation and other underlying economic problems that have led investors and ordinary citizens to bet against the peso.

In the years after its painful default in 2002, which wiped out the savings of millions of people, Argentina enjoyed a fast growing economy thanks in part to the booming world demand for soybeans and other commodities the country exports. But Mrs. Kirchner squandered the recovery in recent years by increasing spending on wasteful subsidies and financing the government partly by printing pesos. As a result, inflation has shot up; independent economists estimate that consumer prices jumped 28 percent last year.

Mrs. Kirchner has also hurt the economy by picking fights with private businesses and investors. In recent years, she nationalized an oil company, an airline and pension funds. In 2011, Argentina implemented controls on how many pesos its citizens could convert into dollars, which helped create a black market for currency transactions and undermined confidence in the government’s economic policies. A recent poll showed that three-quarters of the country said the economy was headed in the wrong direction.

Government officials have begun taking some steps to correct past mistakes. The economy minister, Axel Kicillof, has been negotiating compensation for the oil company, YPF, that the government seized in 2012. And Argentina will put out a new inflation index next month to convince the International Monetary Fund to accept its official data again. While those are good first steps, Mrs. Kirchner and her aides will have to take much bolder steps to repair the damage that they have done to the economy in recent years.