Before declaring herself a firm supporter of “fiscal balance, the solvency of the State” and other good things, Silvina Batakis let it be known that in his opinion Joseph Ber Gelbard had been “the best Minister of Economy in the history” of the country, which, since it was the highest architect of Rodrigazothe explosion that in 1975 marked the end of the Argentine dream, made us suspect that what he had in mind was to impoverish a good part of the survivors of the once prosperous national middle class and then start all over again, as he tried to do, without any success, Isabelita’s shaky government in the months preceding the military coup the following year.
It was not surprising, then, that the markets reacted in panic to the arrival of Batakis to the Treasury Palace; Without wasting a minute, they abruptly devalued some versions of the peso and sent the already stratospheric country risk index higher. Nor did some of his words help about the alleged incompatibility of the “right to travel” and “the generation of jobs”; many saw in them a declaration of war against those who are still able to take vacations. However, she would soon benefit from the attacks of those who did not hesitate to accuse her of launching an “adjustment” with the inadmissible purpose of complying with the agreement with the International Monetary Fund. For the markets, the fact that the new minister has earned the hostility of the most bellicose Kirchnerists, public employees and picketers is a very positive sign.
It would seem that there are two Batakis. One, the admirer of Ber Gelbard, she would be a delusional voluntarist who fantasizes about freezing for a long time the variables that concern her the most; another would be a fairly orthodox economist who understands very well that the country has no choice but to better manage exorbitant public spending. While the former will want to deserve the support of Cristina and her acolytes who, despite everything that has happened, continue to have a lot of political power, the latter knows that what the country needs is a very, very strong dose of realism .
And Albert? Although the influence of the incumbent president and hypothetical owner of the decisive pen has been greatly reduced in recent weeks, it is to be assumed that he prays that “the Greek” manages to postpone the moment of truth that Cristina Kirchner and many others see her approaching. Will he be willing to support her more tenaciously than Guzmán when the soon-to-be ex-minister wanted to implement some unfriendly measures? If he were to drop her, he would sign his own political death certificate.
To her credit, the minister has the resignation of most of the country’s population; For understandable reasons, there are few who believe that the economic situation can improve, even just a tiny bit, in the coming months. On the contrary, the feeling prevails that in August, or at the latest in September, the available money will run out and the country, disconnected from a world that takes it for an incorrigible serial defaulter, It will have to live with its own, that is, without being able to replace many products -coffee, diesel, vehicles, a wide range of electronic devices and so on- that require imported inputs. It is therefore feasible that, as long as the minister does not make blunders, the majority will find her management satisfactory.
Much will depend on your ability to give an impression of strength of soul. Maybe Batakis, as his detractors say, he lacks impressive academic records and, having made a career in a State that is far from meritocratic, he lacks experience in the real world of business, but such deficiencies will matter much less than his eventual commitment to certain values basics.
Inspired by an enigmatic verse of the poet Archilochus of Paros, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin divided thinkers into eclectic “bitches”, that know many things, and “hedgehogs”, that know only one thing that is very big. The same can be said of finance ministers. The most successful are usually hedgehogs who focus on the strategic and let the foxes, who abound here, take care of the details. That is why often a good politician without much economic knowledge performs better in office than a technician who owns an enviable collection of prestigious diplomas.
Be that as it may, it is essential that “the big thing” to which the hedgehogs are clinging is something more than the product of an ideological delusion of the kind favored by those who fill their mouths with trash talk about the only economic order that has turned out to be capable of generate the goods and services that today are considered necessary for almost everyone to enjoy a decent life.
To Batakis He has had to occupy the most important position in a government so weak that there are those who doubt its existence, hence the allusions to a power vacuum, and they speculate that Alberto might slam the door. According to some, he was about to leave before trying, for the umpteenth time, to reconcile with Cristina after Guzmán’s hasty exit. All in all, both the opposition leaders, who fear being forced at any moment to deal with a colossal disaster, as well as many ruling party members who fear justice, want the government formally headed by Alberto to last until December of next year.
Going through the extremely long period of time thus assumed will not be easy for anyone, especially for those who, although they are convinced that the Peronist cycle has already ended, cannot imagine what the next one will be like. Based on the comparative advantages that the country still retains despite everything that has happened, there are those who dream of a renaissance after decades of deterioration, but others foresee a general drop in poverty administered by corrupt cynics more interested in their own well-being than in that of the others.
batakis you will have to decide which of the possible futures should serve as your guide. Judging by some statements, he has already opted for the most promising, but his political ties and the identity of some of his initial teams do not stimulate too much optimism.
Alberto and Martin Guzman they refused to formulate a “plan” because it seemed obvious to them that defining themselves could be politically dangerous. Batakis solved the problem that troubled them by treating the program agreed upon with the IMF as a government “plan”, which immediately angered the sworn enemies of the organization that represents the richest nations but which, according to them, simply does not understand that Argentina is very different from other countries and that it is therefore irrational to ask it to apply measures that could work in the rest of the world but would, in its opinion, be useless here.
Thus, they repeated the traditional approach according to which, since Argentina is a sui generis country, it is up to it to organize the economy according to guidelines that are clearly its own, hence its attachment to the ruinous “model” that was installed after the defeat of Nazism in the World War II and, while making it what the most charitable call the “greatest mystery of the 20th century” and threatening to destroy it entirely well before the end of the 21st century, has allowed a minority to live relatively right.
For more than a century, the most successful politicians in the country have been fighting against the economic currents that, in other parts of the planet, would generate the necessary resources so that billions of people could enjoy a standard of living that they would have envied even wealthier plutocrats of earlier times. For reasons that were basically religious in the case of some and ethical, in the case of others such as the radicals, they opposed the logic of capitalism. Although, over time, many would assert that they were not against capitalism as such but against its “savage” or “neoliberal” variants, they continued to privilege the immediate interests of their respective electoral clienteles, resisting “adjusting” without worrying about the inflationary consequences. of such an attitude.
As well; It is already evident that the long Argentine rebellion against the economic system adopted by the richest countries has failed spectacularly. Even so, those who rage against the IMF, which from their point of view symbolizes foreign evil, refuse to give up. They are right when they say that all countries are different and that schemes that could work well in some will not always be effective in others, but that does not mean that it is possible to challenge with impunity laws that are not merely economic and could be flexible, but which are also mathematics and are not at all.
The search for an endearing alternative, duly national and, of course, far superior to the “models” developed by the United States, European countries, Japan and, with very authoritarian variants, by China, has taken the country to where it is today. . Refusing to recognize it, as some would like who, enamored with ideological abstractions, have managed to convince themselves that reducing the population to misery would allow them to deal a mortal blow to capitalism, would be suicidal.
