Mauricio Macri ... Next President Of Argentina

[Bajo_cero2]

So clearly we need some change in the government, since the existing one is not capable to lock up guys like this. I see him everywhere these days, sure it's not hard to catch him?

Right! He is going to be very efficient prosecuting ... Himself!

The only escape he has is the Presidency for the immunity.

 

[scotttswan]

This is one of the funniest threads i've read in ages.

 

[EJLarson]

Right! He is going to be very efficient prosecuting ... Himself!

The only escape he has is the Presidency for the immunity.

At least he'll be easy to find when they start looking for him.

 

[sesamosinsal]

So clearly we need some change in the government, since the existing one is not capable to lock up guys like this. I see him everywhere these days, sure it's not hard to catch him?

To be "procesado" means to be indicted; he hasn't been "condenado".

But hey, Macri joins Boudou, and of course there's Menem who has actually been condenado but is protected by legislative immunity...

All those on the forum thinking we're going to get change with Macri. Haha. That's cute.

 

[TWB103]

All those on the forum thinking we're going to get change with Macri. Haha. That's cute.

Change in general or change in political prosecutions?

Take 2 politicians. One is whiney ,self righteous , sanctimonious, childish, egocentric ,divisive , unstable , irrational , hypocritical and says you are nothing without his/her protection and guidance.


The other says take responsibility for your development and betterment be the change you want to see, real social economic change in the country will take more than 4 years to establish itself, be positive, less talking more doing etc

Id rather go with the latter even if only by what they say. Better the devil you know than dont know? i dont think so in this case.

Macri isnt a jeremy corbyn or bernie sanders but then again at least he isnt cfk either...and thats good enough for most macri 'supporters' here it seems.

 

[EJLarson]

All those on the forum thinking we're going to get change with Macri. Haha. That's cute.

Hey, Bradly, it's easy to snark and I do a lot of it myself. So if you mean "Argentina has been fkd up for all its history and that won't change with any new administration," fine. Cynical, valid point.

But if you're seriously saying that there won't be huge changes in Argentine daily life under Macri as compared to cfk's last eight years, well ... I don't believe there are many people on that bus.

 

[ben]

Hey, Bradly, it's easy to snark and I do a lot of it myself. So if you mean "Argentina has been fkd up for all its history and that won't change with any new administration," fine. Cynical, valid point.

But if you're seriously saying that there won't be huge changes in Argentine daily life under Macri as compared to cfk's last eight years, well ... I don't believe there are many people on that bus.

Very well put.
As has been said before, it's a poor situation when Macri is the good candidate. That said, the situation truly is poor, and Macri is the good candidate.

 

[EJLarson]

As has been said before, it's a poor situation when Macri is the good candidate. That said, the situation truly is poor, and Macri is the good candidate.

As I've said many times in life, including here, I can't count the times I've voted while holding my nose - but the stench of the other candidate was worse than the one I reluctantly voted for. I believe we call that "real life."

 

[sesamosinsal]

But if you're seriously saying that there won't be huge changes in Argentine daily life under Macri as compared to cfk's last eight years, well ... I don't believe there are many people on that bus.

My comment was in reference to corruption -- I know it wasn't very clear. He's just like the rest, just as corrupt as the rest, and probably won't do much better than the rest. But we can hope.. or dream.

I definitely think there will be changes in daily life. Economically-speaking, things will probably improve in the near-term as Argentina settles with buitres at an enormous cost (it will be appropriate for Macri's econ team from the 90s to deal with this mess anyway, maybe Cavallo can lead the negotiations), re-enters capital markets, takes on debts like everyone else to sustain (and probably expand) imports, FX stability, and most importantly the mirage of an economy that's coming back.

But there will be a devaluation... perhaps around March now, thanks to Vanoli.

My biggest problem with Macri and his economic team is the belief that a devaluation will solve many of Argentina's problems. However, there are no guarantees. Economically-speaking it might make sense to devalue in these conditions, but not so much sense if your trading partners are devaluing and adopting policies that encourage domestic consumption. In this environment of global, competitive devaluations, the sky's the limit. How far will governments go to suppress demand for the USD and consequently kill real wages, purchasing power and thus standards of living? How much global deflation is necessary for the American consumer to return to her/his habits of mindless consumption of crap she/he doesn't need?

I hate the cepo, but it was implemented to prioritize how the dollars are spent, rather than devaluing the national currency to stifle demand for USD. While this might make Argentine exports that aren't priced in dollars more expensive (soybeans are priced in USD according to the market), the cheaper dollar had direct positive effects on the domestic economy. There are pros and cons to everything. I think there are probably more pros for the cepo than cons, but only when considering the global economic environment that many emerging markets have been facing since 2012. Read for more info: http://www.zerohedge...ast-4-years-ago -- The problem with dollars/exports isn't that Argentina is no longer competitive; it's that global trade is in the gutter.

As I've said in other posts, I am not a fan of either Macri or Scioli, and probably would vote en blanco when push came to shove. However, if I absolutely had to choose between either one, I'd probably choose Scioli over Macri. Scioli has been more consistent, and his economic team has better policies than Macri's economic team of losers from the 90s (Melconian, Cavallo, et al).

 

[ben]

Look, one may have been able to discuss the pros and cons of the cepo, had the problem only been the cepo. The cepo was not the only problem.
The problem was and is the mendacity that completely permeates society here, in the government, in the economy and back. The cepo is the highly visible tip of a massive iceberg.

At the beginning, you will recall, it was declared ad nauseam that "no hay cepo cambiario". Google that phrase please and see what you get. All you had to do is pay your taxes, and you could easily get your money back. Sounds simple, right? - except that everybody knows that the tax authority in this country is a political thuggery operation, with the twin purposes of enriching its officials and intimidating people with things to say into not saying them. Same for the import restrictions. Things were imported, untold amounts of containers of stuff that simply came in through the back door, all of which of course was paid with the blue dollar.

Well, it soon turned out that declaring your taxes wasn't enough. Soon, you were being told what percent of your after-tax income you could spend on buying dollars. Living expenses were generously estimated and discounted for you. Live with parents? Too bad. Even for official, legal importers - whose costs often included substantial, shall we say, undeclared expenditures towards the end of receiving that coveted status - the dollars were given capriciously and unpredictably. Many importers found themselves getting dollars via CCL, at almost the blue rate. This is not a normal way of running a business. It's the way you live when you can't rely on anything the gov't says.

The result was and is that the proposed 'prioritization' never stood a chance. It might or might not work in a normal society where the leader boldly made a (rare) national televised address explaining what was happening, why it was necessary, and appealing to people's sense of civic responsibility. It has no chance of working in a society more accustomed to using back doors than front doors both outside and inside the halls of power, where the official organs use a mind-numbing intensity of doublespeak, where when a government spokesman or official says 'A', that alone indicates that 'B' or 'C' is probably true.

Rather than reform the tax system with both carrots and sticks - strong enforcement on the one hand, and on the other hand a concerted effort to root out corruption and make working within the system a viable option - the govt. opted to be part of the problem. That doesn't help with the solution.

So when we talk about the cepo, we are not simply referring to a system of currency restrictions, which the UK too had at one point. Rather, we are referring to the entire duplicitous and cancerous machinery which the cepo has come to represent. Indeed, it's difficult to find four letters which more neatly encapsulate everything wrong here.

And so when Macri talks about ending the cepo on the first day, what excites people is not the devaluation itself, which in and of itself may indeed be painful and perhaps unwise. It is rather his promise, his explicit promise, to stop lying. If the net result is that the economy and the government's revenue systems become more normal, everybody understands that it's well worth it. If that doesn't happen, of course, that's a different story.