@ropasuciaafuera
I strongly disagree with your view on corruption. I think it´s exactly that kind of factors that Argentina needs to deal with at this stage of development. Actually it should have been done a long time ago since Argentina been more or less stuck in the same development stage for a long time.
There are different ways to categorize development(democracy/economic, 3-stage, 5-stage etc.) I think we can agree on that Argentina cannot be compared to an African country. It just seems so difficult for Argentina to reach the next step. I believe that dealing with corruption, lack of transparency, rule of law, justice system are some of the key factors to be able to take that step. I truly believe that Argentina would benefit from more trust in government, politicians, institutions and business.
I agree that IMF recipes have not been helping developing countries much. It doesn't mean that all their recommendations are bad but sadly they never really take into account specific problems, needs and culture of a country to be of any real help.
I believe the origins of the current situation more or less started as far back as the Great Depression. Before that Argentina had a bright future.
High levels of foreign investments and growing industrialization, implementation of free education for all children(non-religious), Ley Palacios(which I think should make Alfredo Palacio a bigger hero for the working class than Peron and Evita combined) and the radicals work toward democratic institutions and fair elections.
However, after the crash 1929 Argentina has suffered from extreme and mostly stupid political decisions(the female vote being the main exception), coups and dictatorships.
The country kept on growing but also debt, peso losing value and inflation problems.
Maybe you don´t want to talk about who is responsible for the current economical situation and problems but I do. Dictorship, Peronism and Domingo Cavallo.
I think the universal child allowance is great (Carrio should have more credit for this) along with greatly improved rights for homo- and transexual persons.
Economically I think the Kirchners have turned a great and unique opportunity after the default to a probable disaster, at best if all goes well a mediocre performance. I am no specialist what so ever, but as far as I know a growing economy means growing inflation. The more the economy grows, the more careful you need to be with the inflation as it can easily turn into a vicious circle.
Where I come from we have an independent central bank with a specific goal to fight and keep inflation at a healthy level based on expected economical growth. It has worked out pretty well. (
www.riksbank.se/en/Monetary-policy/Questions-and-answers/)
Might give you a clue why reliable statistics and independent institutions free from political pressure are important.
Stability is a keyword that should be used more. Imagine yourself if you and some friends play Monopoly but you have a someone that wants to speed up the game because it is not fast enough. This person starts changing some rules and then some more and after a while some players dont understand the new rules while others use them for their own benefit and someone might manage to cheat because the rules were unclear and you might have to go back to were you started changing the rules and it just becomes a mess. As an outsider I would not want play because of these unclear rules.
The new dollar rule is/was a massive change now/in the past but people are used to that old dollar rule now. I am not saying it is a good rule, but maybe a bit smaller change would have kept some of the players less annoyed. Many have used them as a backup because of mistrust in the game rules and the monopoly money.
Again I will use my native country as an example, sorry about that. If I want I can open what we call a currency account. Any account is tied to a specific currency of choice. Good for importers/exporters and for saving in other currencies if thats your thing. If you take cash out they are exchanged to national currency and you pay ~30% tax if there is a profit. Something similar could have been a softer approach on the dollar problem in Argentina.
The only thing that would make me forgive some of the mistakes that this government has done would be to change the Constitution. No, not the re-re, but to apply parliamentarism( I know a huge change of the monopoly rules) but i truly think it would be good for Argentina in the long run. As far as I can think of right now the only successful presidentialism is the U.S.
Even Nestor seem to have thought that it might be the solution for many of Argentina's problem, but on the other hand he and even more his wife have run the country in pretty much the opposite direction of that outcome.
To close this circle I can say that if this government starts to wake up to reality and deal with the corruption among other things I would at least tolerate them.
