2023-05-19 03:30:00
If it were not for the Fund’s willingness to bear with equanimity the insults that are thrown at it, the country’s economic situation would be even worse.
Since its birth in 1944, the International Monetary Fund has been the number one enemy of Argentine populism. Over the years, unionists and left-wing groups have mounted a long series of mass demonstrations once morest him. Not only Peronist caudillos but also radicals and others have lashed out over and over once more with furious harangues. For all of them, he embodies evil.
They lash out at the IMF because it is a US-backed institution that clings to the reactionary notion that nothing in life is free and therefore it is dangerous to allow public spending to reach levels that will prove to be unsustainable in the long run. These are unpleasant facts that Politicians everywhere are apt to brush it off while they can, but few are as intent on mocking them as Argentina’s populists.
Yet, despite the visceral hatred that characters like Cristina, Alberto and the militants of La Cámpora say they feel for the IMF, is today the most important ally that Kirchnerism has. If it were not for the Fund’s willingness to bear with equanimity the insults that are thrown at it, the country’s economic situation would be even worse than it actually is.
Sergio Massa understands it very well. The Minister of Economy has taken advantage of the extraordinary flexibility that is his trademark to get the implicit endorsement of Kristalina Georgieva and her people without losing the support of Cristina who, of course, understands that breaking with the Fund prematurely would have unfortunate consequences for her because it would deprive the government, and to the movement that he leads, of the money they need.
Presumably, due to ideological affinity, Both the IMF managers and the rich world politicians who finance it would like Together for Change to win the elections by beating down scheduled for this year so that Argentina would finally have a government that in his opinion would be rational. However, since they closely follow the political evolution of the country, they understand that They can no longer trust that the opposition alliance will impose itself as overwhelmingly as seemed likely a few months ago. If the most recent polls are correct, there might be a three-way tie, with Javier Milei in the role of the Joker, or even a Peronist triumph. In that case, they would prefer that the next president was his old friend, Massa. They want to believe that he is a realist.
Although the body’s technicians are not finding it easy to continue giving the quick-moving Tigrense the benefit of every conceivable doubt, those in charge will have come to the conclusion that, because he is a regular visitor to the United States who tends to get along with “right-wing” politicians of that country, you will have been immunized once morest the intellectual viruses that affect many of your fellow men who seem to take their own rhetoric very seriously. From his point of view, The Argentine crisis is the consequence of the adherence of a very powerful sector of the political elite to a set of very bad ideas and, unless other heavyweights of national populism emulate Massa, there will be no way to ensure that Argentina begins to recover from its wounds.
Fund dilemmas
The Fund’s recipe is quite simple: it would like the Kirchner government to reduce the fiscal deficit, that is, to adjust, to devalue the official peso, to stop the machine and to do more to recover reserves. That’s a lot to ask just months before key elections, but since the alternative would be even more inflation that would risk the country suffering a general collapse, he sees no less painful options.
The dilemmas are many. If the IMF lends a lot more money to the Argentine government, it would allow it to prolong the life of a “model” that its technicians believe is unfeasible, but if it refuses to do so, a great catastrophe might be unleashed that, In addition to ruining millions of Argentines, it would shake the already precarious global financial architecture. Needless to say, no one associated with the agency wants to share the responsibility for what everyone would see as an unforgivable failure.
Although it has the direct or indirect collaboration of the most prestigious economists on the planet, the IMF – an institution that, let us not forget, represents the developed world – simply does not know what it should do to help solve the unusual case of Argentina. The bewilderment he feels is understandable for a country that might theoretically be very rich but, for reasons that might be described as philosophical, manages to continue to decline.
1684467701
#Massa #IMF #friends
