What’s happening in Argentina

The IMF alarm for the Argentine economy reignites concerns and controversies between the Milei government and the opposition. The article by Livio Zanotti, author of Ildiavolononmuoremai

A bad slide in Treasury bonds with a corresponding jump in country risk to 1600 points (which Milei attributed to the largest Argentine bank, accusing it with complete ease of coup-making ), is followed by the estimate of the recession by the Monetary Fund (IMF). in progress, evaluating it at 3.5% from the expected 2.8. Therefore a worsening of 0.7 tenths; and delaying a 5% recovery to 2025. Last year the economic contraction in the large South American country was 1.6%. These are data which find concrete, immediate and visible confirmation in the continuous increase in consumer prices and in the increase in poverty (57.4% equal to over 27 million people, the highest since 2004), the extreme aspect of which is the large number of homeless people sleeping on pavements and in gardens despite the intensity of the winter cold.

The economic crisis is also the thermometer of the various political and social tensions shaking the country, distracted no more than a day by the euphoria aroused by the victory of the blue and white national team against Colombia in the continental football cup in Miami. Indeed, even in football, discontent is at its highest. Desperate for investment, Javier Milei is pushing harder than ever for the transformation of football clubs into public limited companies to be listed on the stock exchange. A revolution not without rationalization requirements, but which would upset the current ownership structures; also questionable, but with the undoubted virtue of being popular due to their extreme diffusion. So much so that this latest controversy has put a damper on a fact already accomplished and certainly of no less political impact: the sudden dissolution of the heads of all the secret services.

We are well beyond the criticism for the esteem and sympathy shown personally by the current Argentine head of state to his counterpart from El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, now formally accused by Human Rights Watch of having had over 3 thousand teenagers completely arbitrarily arrested, then repeatedly tortured and subjected to sexual violence. Without such systems being able to find acceptable justifications in the all-out struggle (and without any respect for human rights, nor for fundamental laws signed internationally by El Salvador itself) unleashed against the youth gangs that infested the Central American country. Finally, the Bolsonaro club medal which praises the honor of machismo and sexual vigor recently given to Javier Milei only invites irony and public psychoanalytic diagnoses (some of them even serious).

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/fmi-allarme-economia-argentina/ on Sat, 20 Jul 2024 04:55:04 +0000.