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  • Argentina 10 Years On

    Argentina tango lessons: Europe’s turn for financial danse macabre?


    Posted by admin on dic 21, 2011 at 11:28 AM in English



    Exactly ten years ago Argentina suffered a full-scale financial and governmental collapse. That was the end-result of over a decade of doing exactly what the IMF, international bankers, rating agencies and global “experts” told us to do.

    Then President Fernando de la Rúa kept applying all IMF recipes to the very last minute, making us swallow their poisonous “remedies”.

    It all began getting really ugly in early 2001 when De la Rúa could no longer service Argentina’s “sovereign debt” even after driving the country into full “deficit zero” mode, slashing public spending, jobs, health, education and key public services.

    By March 2001, he had brought back Domingo Cavallo as finance minister, a post Cavallo had already held for six years in the nineties under then-President Carlos Menem, imposing outrageous IMF deregulation and privatization policies that weakened the state and led straight to the 2001 collapse.

    Well, it wasn’t really De la Rúa who brought back Cavallo but rather David Rockefeller (JPMorgan Chase) and William Rhodes (CitiCorp), who personally came to Buenos Aires to tell/order President De la Rúa to name Cavallo… or else!

    So, by June 2001, Cavallo – a Trilateral Commission member and Soros-Rockefeller-Rhodes protégé – tried to allay a default by engineering a new sovereign debt bond mega-swap which increased public debt by $51 billion, but did not avert total collapse that December.

    What then? De la Rúa and Cavallo protected the bankers, avoiding a massive run on all banks by freezing all bank deposits. “Corralito” they called it – “the crib” – whereby account holders could only withdraw 250 pesos per week (at the time, equivalent to $250; after the 2002 devaluation, equal to $75).

    Argentina’s economy all but collapsed; people took to the streets banging pots and pans, screaming and yelling, calling all bankers ‘thieves, criminals, crooks, swindlers and robbers’ but… the big mega-bank bronze gates all remained tightly shut. No one got their money back.

    Half of bank deposits were in dollars. Again, no one got their dollars back, but just as pesos at a fraudulent rate of exchange after devaluation had been imposed and Argentina’s so-called “convertibility” Currency Board that Cavallo had imposed a decade earlier pegging the peso to the dollar at an unrealisticone-to-one parity, was dropped.

    Clearly,this was a massive banker-orchestrated, government-backed robbery of the assets and savings of 40 million Argentinians.Half our population quickly fell below the poverty line, GDP contracted by almost 40% in 2002, millions lost their jobs, their savings, their homes to foreclosures, their livelihoods and yet… not one single bank folded or collapsed!

    Amid rioting in Buenos Aires and major cities and brutal police repression that left 30 dead on the streets, De la Rúa boarded his helicopter on the rooftop of the “Casa Rosada” presidential palace and abandoned ship. That last week of December 2001, four presidents successively went by until finally the bankers, the media, and the US State and Treasury Departments accepted Eduardo Duhalde as provisional president. He finally named finance minister Roberto Lavagna, a founding member of the local CARI, the Argentine Council on Foreign Relations, which is the local New York CFR branch.

    Argentina was used as a testing ground by the global power elite to learn how a full-scale financial, monetary, banking and economic collapse can be controlled and its social consequences suitably engineered to ensure that, with time: (a) the bankers came out unharmed, (b) “democratic order” is re-instated and the new government imposes another sovereign debt mega-swap, balance their numbers, and calm the people down (or else!), and (c) put big smiles back on bankster faces…Business as usual!

    The lessons learned in Argentina in 2001/3 are today being used in Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Iceland, the UK and the US.
    So, “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators, lend me your ears! You haven’t got a chance! The global money masters already made their financial war game exercise in Argentina.

    At one point it got so bad that New York Times journalist Larry Rohter (later alleged by the Brazilian government to have ties with the CIA) had the gall to suggest the territorial break-up of Argentina to “solve” our debt crisis. The title of his perverse article, published on 27 August 2002, said it all: “Some in Argentina see secession as the answer to economic peril”, specifically targeting our natural resources-rich Patagonian region…

    Then, the global power elite finally got their man when Néstor Kirchner became president in May 2003. Kirchner retained the finance minister, Lavagna, engineered yet another sovereign debt mega-swap running 42 years into the future (!); he paid the IMF the full amount they claimed of $10 billion (in cash, in dollars and with no deductions; i.e. absolutely most-favored creditor status!) getting nothing in return; he further weakened Argentina’s military, dumbed-down education, media and culture, and ended up imposing his wife Cristina as successor.

    Clearly, lots of lessons were learned from the “Argentine experience,” which come in so handy when dealing with those rowdy, poorer Europeans today.

    So, one decade on…. anyone for a tango?

    http://www.asalbuchi.com.ar/2011/12/...danse-macabre/

  • #2
    Re: Argentina 10 Years On

    Don: a terribly misleading read.
    Kirchner:
    1) made a mega swap, but witha 70% haircut. Argentina´s public debt became sustainable. That was AGAINST the opinion-pressures of the financial establishment.
    2) Implemented heavy taxation on agri exports, mainlay soy beans. That originated a near coup d etat from the powerful rural oligarchy in 2008. On the other way, it allowed, with the other policies here mentioned to finance an ample social policy and public investment in infrastructure, etc.
    3) It returned money held by the private social security system implemented by Menem to the State. It was a huge expropiation from the banks.
    4) Implemented, again against the opinion-presssures dooms pronostication of system ideologues, a low rate of exchange. And a whole array of protectionist measures for Argentine industry. Which had been thoroughly destroyed by Menem´s neoliberal policies.
    5)Yes, Argentina paid the IMF debt with reserves, liberating the country of pernicious IMF monitoring. That, at the time was a crisis epoch for the IMF, it had nobody to lend to. Well, nowadays, financial crisis between has changed.
    6) the pardons conceded by Menem, De la Rua, etc to the human rights violators of the 70-80ies were revoked. They are now in prison for the rest of their lives.
    7) It established a steady policy towards making paying taxes something well understood by the whole population
    8) Argentina is, much to it´s own benefit out of the world financial markets. It doesn´t need to be inside them. It´s debt burden has fallen substantially and service is paid by with the State income.
    9) etc, etc, and again, etc.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Argentina 10 Years On

      Good post, SG. Do you think there's traction in examining Argentina's experience in determining what is and what isn't applicable today?

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Argentina 10 Years On

        I think highly indebted european countries, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, maybe Italy could take example of Argentina. Of course, the first thing to do would be abandon the euro.
        And second, transform all public and private debt into the new devalued currency.
        And then.....
        Well, just the two first points are a true revolution.
        Even inside capitalism, things can be very different.
        Try comparing the life of a Swedish worker to that of an Haitian or Guatemalan.
        And yes, there are a lot of experience to be taken from Argentina, before 2001 and after.
        As Dean Baker and Mike Whitney now acknowledge the ECB-Merkel-Sarkozy-Troika policy is not a mistake.
        It´s just a cold calculated series of moves with an end to a)destroy the welfare state and b) privatize what remains of public services companies, real estate and the rest.
        So, financial relief shall be taken only in the last minute, when things are about to melt. Well if I remember correctly, DB and MW are not still aware of b. They will become soon.
        There is a plan.
        No conspiracy theories here.
        Only the peoples of those countries are in a position to stop the main plan.
        Shall they?
        History shall tell
        And of course, I am not being original. Just to name one, Joseph Stiglitz says more or less the same.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Argentina 10 Years On

          I don't like DE-valuation of the currency as a solution to anything. I also don't like nationalism, trade protectionism, making debt and more debt and more stupid spending and more bloated government to be, "sustainable" by creating "haircuts" for everyone through inflation and outright DE-valuation..... Those are NOT solutions, at least not over the long run........ Those solutions drive capital OUT of Argentina, they drive industry OUT of Argentina and they drive people (both rich and poor) OUT of Argentina.

          Maybe the IMF and the World Bank and other creditors are (or were) trying to tell the Argentinians something: "Tighten your belts, stop the games, stop the protests, stop the pot-banging; for once suck-it-in and pay your bills."

          Needless to say, I am not one of those persons who believe in conspiracy theories about: "the CFR or the so-called, 'Tri-lateralists' or world bankers, the Rockefellers, 'Wall Street interests', Red China, zionists, neo-liberals, ordinary liberals, the United Nations, the 'secret Illuminatti', the Kremlin, or whatever".

          To me, the enemy is fiat money, unlimited spending, DE-valuation and consequent inflation. And that is it. Don't spin conspiracy theories nor advocate more of the same old failed (Keynesian) inflationist policies........ and especially not in Argentina.
          Last edited by Starving Steve; January 01, 2012, 07:51 PM. Reason: Who could forget the secret Illuminatti ?

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