Well, they have been "buitres" in the context of Latin America. It's a cliché, but it is also true. Their program of "loans in exchange for privatization and austerity" has not had a single success story as far as resulting in economic development throughout all the decades this has been attempted. The only growth has been in the profits of third-party creditors like Blackrock.
Don't forget Macri borrowed $50B toward the end of his term. Even the FT was critical of both Macri and the IMF for their handling of this:
Argentina: how IMF’s biggest ever bailout crumbled under Macri.
“I’ve been friends with Mauricio for a long time, many years . . . we knew each other very well,” Mr Trump told reporters when he visited Argentina in 2018. “I actually did business with his family.” Mr Trump was referring to his purchase of a prime New York site for $95m in 1984 from Mr Macri’s father, Franco.
“Macri caught the ear of Trump,” says Hector Torres, a former senior IMF official now at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a Canadian think-tank. “He got Trump to believe he needed a hand and he started [lobbying] via the [US] Treasury before going to the IMF.”
Let me first say that I agree with you on Macri. Argentina should have gone straight into default in 2018.
Now to your main point: if you (and for that matter: Argentina in general on this) are so critical of the IMF: why on earth would you ask them gor money then again and again if you do not agree with the conditions? Don’t you see this as inconsequent? And in your view: what conditions should be made by the IMF? None at all? To finance a good old Keynesian spending spree, of which half of it will certainly disappear in Santa Cruz?
I also don't really understand why the IMF would still lend money to Argentina. It is the world’s biggest serial defaulter (i wouldn’t say cheater). It is like sending a truck load of booze and crack every couple of years to a drug addict with a long history of mental issues. And every time the boozer of course tells you that he will give it up soon.
And also why private creditors are again and again falling into this trap is beyond me. If you really want to have the risk covered, then the interest rate would be that high that it is impossible to stem it for any country. I am seriously wondering why investors are not suing Blackrock and Co for malpractice.
A question that someone might answer here: i understand that IMF debts are somehow “privileged” in relation to normal creditors. Do they receive some of securities (i doubt that)? Right now the fiscal deficit in Argentina is so big (i believe only in the first half of 2020 around 14bn usd) that surely also the IMF has to accept some kind of cut. Even more as the current government has not even shown a hint of limiting the public spending.