The Case For President Sergio Massa

[Ries]

I am amused when people say that you cannot avoid paying the IMF. Argentina has defaulted on its soverign debt three times- in 2001, 2014,2020, and the IMF renegotiated, and continued loaning money, despite all three.
Spain has defautled 5 times, Greece 6- defaulting on soverign debt is actually not all that uncommon.

 

[antipodean]

I am amused when people say that you cannot avoid paying the IMF. Argentina has defaulted on its soverign debt three times- in 2001, 2014,2020, and the IMF renegotiated, and continued loaning money, despite all three.
Spain has defautled 5 times, Greece 6- defaulting on soverign debt is actually not all that uncommon.

Bingo. So why is Massa not choosing or considering default as an option if the IMF is so harmful to Argentina?

Given the amount of discussion about the IMF loan in a thread about the case for Massa's presidency, I think many of the members who are dwelling on this subject will need to vote in blank since the Izquierda (the only party who currently advocates default/ a harder stance against the IMF) no longer has a candidate in the race and Massa or Milei, the IMF is going to get paid and the government will be making fiscal adjustments that people will feel the pinch of.

 

[jlynch]

"Figures don't lie, but liars figure"

Three statisticians went on safari in Africa. The first one shot at an elephant, and missed by a foot to the right. The second one shot at the elephant, and missed by a foot to the left. The third one threw up his arms and exulted, "Yeah! We got him!".

No one of any education would deny that statistics are very useful tools, and vital to management of almost anything. But they can also be manipulated outrageously, and they have their blind spots, as the elephant story above is intended to illustrate. And I'm not calling any of the users here liars; I'm just saying that the charts and graphs they show may have been created by persons with an intention to deceive.

this is the common Argentine way of dismissing facts and figures without presenting even "alternative facts" or where to get their versions

 

[toongeorges]

Meanwhile we have this hiperinflación caused by the artificial debt created by Macri and the artificial lack of usd created by Macri.But for you this is not corruption. Right!

Argentina would have been paradise if Macri had not been elected...

The high inflation and debt started before Macri and was masterminded by Nestor and Cristina and their team. They were masters in spending more than they could. Argentina was in a death spiral in 2015, people were fed up with the Peronists and that is why they elected Macri. Macri did not fix things with his gradualismo and the Kirchneristas came back to screw things up even more. If Argentines now elect a minister of finance who is directly responsible for an annual inflation heading towards 200-300%, they will have to live with the consequences. It is going to be ugly, no matter what.

At this time "pero Macri" has already been outdated for 4 years. Are you implying that the current government had no possibilities to deal with the situation and it will always be Macri's fault?

 

[toongeorges]

...

End rant.

I am not going to quote your whole post.

Yes, Europe has exploited in the past most of Latin America, the Spanish and Portuguese were not interested in making a colony wealthy, they were interested in exploitation. Yet, Argentina did not have much to offer for exploitation and Argentina became a country of immigrants like the US or Australia and could have been wealthy if Argentines chose the right policies.

You can play the victim and hold on to that role or you can get your act together and work on improving your situation. Argentines are better at complaining than at fixing problems.

Both "left" and "right" in Latin America in my view do not have the right approach, because both polarize. The ones are against the rich, the others against the poor and they keep making life of the others miserable. A good government has to equally help all citizens, rich and poor at the same time.

The poor are not poor because the rich have stolen from them, that is nonsense. We do not live in a zero sum world. A vagrant can complain that it is not fair he has no food, while a farmer who works all day for it has food. By doing the right things, you can create value and be richer than others and there is no shame in being rich. If people become rich by doing the right things for society, they should actually be stimulated, because other people benefit from the services they offer. In a fair society, you have to provide support for the poor to improve their situation and at the same time not hinder rich people from doing good things. You do not have to choose between either supporting the poor or the rich. If you do choose only one of them, you always end up losing.

 

[toongeorges]

There is only one billionaire that I know of who was truly self-made, Marcos Galperin, the founder of Mercado Libre, which was funded by US venture capital (Hicks, Muse).

He is an Uruguayan now, he couldn't take it anymore in Argentina...

 

[toongeorges]

Macri swapped private funds, which could have been subjected to a haircut or renegotiated, for IMF funds for which the IMF always gets 100% of its money back, no haircuts. There is no equivalence with Massa’s actions, Macri had options, Massa has none: if he defaults on the IMF, Argentina is cut off from all external capital markets, nobody will advance credit, hugely complicating any import / export business and imposing more costs on Argentina.

One was incredibly, implausibly, stupid and so almost certainly corrupt, leaving Argentina with huge loans at worse conditions than it already had, the other is only desperate and cannot for now escape the IMF.

Saying Macri had options and Massa doesn't seems to be a bit unfair to Macri.

Here is some background story to the IMF loan Macri took: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-2-billion-from-argentinas-economic-collapse/

Before Macri took office, Argentina was already in default and could not borrow money anymore. Argentina had figured out that it had to pay a lower interest rate on bonds issued in USD than on bonds issued in Argentine pesos. It thought it was a smart move to issue bonds in USD. Only, the bonds in USD followed US law and the court of New York decided about the payment conditions, not Argentina. Because Cristina did not want to pay back the bonds, but the court of New York ordered so, Argentina was in default. When Macri took out the IMF loan, he settled with the USD bond holders and took Argentina out of default, but Argentina is now stuck with the IMF loan.

 

[toongeorges]

the charts and graphs they show may have been created by persons with an intention to deceive.

Alberto Fernández apparently was good at it when he was head of INDEC

 

[Redpossum]

Alberto Fernández apparently was good at it when he was head of INDEC

You're just making friends with everyone tonight, aren't you?

 

[Quilombo]

He is an Uruguayan now, he couldn't take it anymore in Argentina...

He's such an arrogant asshole, the man acts like he's some sort of financial genius, yet all he did was ripoff Amazon and eBay's concepts, while getting a ton of funding from the later. Revolutionary, akin to calling whoever founded Mostaza a genius as if it wasn't "McDonald's, but Argentine".

I am amused when people say that you cannot avoid paying the IMF. Argentina has defaulted on its soverign debt three times- in 2001, 2014,2020, and the IMF renegotiated, and continued loaning money, despite all three.
Spain has defautled 5 times, Greece 6- defaulting on soverign debt is actually not all that uncommon.

This is one of the (many) reasons why I have never voted K; they campaigned on the IMF loan being illegal/immoral, especially the Campora, and look what they did the second they took power: decoupled the pension adjustments from inflation, agreed to pay the loan under new terms, lowered the minimum wage to levels not seen since the 80s, and most lately, have agreed to all sorts of measures one can legitimately call a Massazo, all with Cristina and Maximo's blessing.

The country should have played hardball during COVID - write down the debt to say 30¢ on the dollar or you get nothing, but no, instead there are endless amounts of dollars for the IMF, for Aerolineas Argentinas, for the MEP/CCL market, etc. and nothing for cancer meds, for capital goods for productive industries, for investments in the Argentine people broadly, etc. We got the worst of both worlds: we continue paying the debt and the economy is a shitshow anyways.

But I digress; Massa bragged saying he's always texting with folks in NYC and DC earlier this year when people suggested that Bullrich's team was trying to undermine him using backchannels, and I don't doubt it for a bit: he's a spineless weasel that would sell his son's soul for a second in Rivadavia's Chair, and if people think he won't sell out the future of Argentines for the same they're sadly mistaken. I fully believe Milei would be a disaster of a president, but Massa has already been president for the past year, and it has been nothing short of ruinous.

Whoever is victorious will be ruinous for Argentina; if these are the two best people we could come up with for the moment, we may truly deserve the fate that collectively awaits us. However, it remains a shame that, as always, those who will pay the most for our incompetence as a country are those least capable of doing so.