Every politician knows that being taken for a doubting weakling would be fatal to him.. To reach the top, you will have to impress others with your mental strength, with your iron will to achieve your goals without being intimidated by obstacles along the way, even when it comes to phenomena as unmanageable as globalization, the repercussions of a distant war that is changing the international order or, of course, the propensity of the financial markets to try to bring down any economic model that seems unsustainable.
It is therefore logical that the leaders are reluctant to point out that many of the difficulties they currently face are of external origin and that they will not be able to overcome them; they anticipate that if they do, they will be accused of trying to blame others for their own failures. This is why in the developed world all governments have felt compelled to take responsibility for an unusually high rate of inflation, bordering on ten percent a year, which the local electorate tends to attribute to mistakes made by those in power in their own country. Needless to say, everyone is in trouble.
Although Argentina is a sui generis case, the eventful evolution of the national economy has never been unrelated to what was happening in the rest of the world. As bad as it weighs us, there are many signs that very bad times are coming that will make the task of the salvageable part of the divided Kirchnerist government and its successor, be it the latter, even harder. Together for Change, a libertarian cast or something different that, to everyone’s surprise, breaks out in the coming months. Even if the country were to enjoy a period of soothing stability, it would have to prepare for a series of adjustments, since the damned international markets are proving determined to punish any deviation with brutality.
It’s what they just did United Kingdoman economic power, where in a couple of days they liquidated the incipient management of the soon-to-be former prime minister Liz Truss after judging that the “mini-budget” that he presented when he came to office was unfeasible. With her ruthless pressure, she managed to ensure that she was replaced by Rishi Sunak, a politician with orthodox credentials who, as all his supporters stress, owed his rise to his presumed ability to reassure those operating in the financial markets. This is not a negligible talent; as the British realized, angering them can have extremely painful concrete consequences for many millions of people.
Because the Argentine political system is presidential, a president may believe he is in better conditions to challenge the markets than the heads of government of a parliamentary one, such as the British. As long as he is a Peronist, since it would cost much more for a radical or liberal to survive a currency crisis for a long time, you may be able to get away with it, but the costs to the population of the successes in this regard that have been recorded have been enormous. The prolonged economic – and therefore social – decline of the country is largely the result of the refusal of generations of politicians to be impressed by the growls of the markets.
Now, it is very easy to justify such an attitude with forceful ideological, religious and ethical arguments and describe as scandalous the will of some to put the interests of the financiers before those of the majority, but this is no consolation for the sacrificed that already include more than half of the population; It is not only about the poor and indigent but also about the many who, had the circumstances been different, would enjoy a much higher standard of living than they have been given, with more opportunities to develop personally.
In United States and Europegovernments are harassed by people’s resistance to understanding that the rapid rise in the prices of almost all goods and services is due to something more than the ineffectiveness of those in power, although for a while it helped them that few were willing to recognize that, sooner or later, a very serious crisis would break out due to the increase in the money supply when mitigating the impact of the pandemic on the lives of the population was a priority.
Warning, in the hope that his compatriots would resign themselves to a surely prolonged period of austerity, that “the age of plenty” had come to an end, the French president Emmanuel Macron it only succeeded in triggering a series of strikes and violent street riots that have not yet ended. Needless to say, those in charge of the Argentine government fear that the same thing will happen here if it occurs to them to talk about the urgent need to apply turnstiles to the battered national economy.
However, unlike Cristina and, in her most recent avatar, Alberto, Sergio Massa he does have a certain respect for the markets which, unfortunately, in their own way represent the real economy. How could it be otherwise, the pragmatism that he displays infuriates traditionalists, characters like Maximo Kirchner, Pablo Moyano and others of like mind, of whom there are many, who have made a career denouncing such thinking. If it weren’t for the fear that one fine day the Argentines would emulate the French, Massa would already have seen himself expelled from the place he occupies for the crime of wanting to surreptitiously reduce public spending.
Perhaps the proposal that has motivated the most indignation, authentic or simulated, is that of pruning the funds destined for education. Although the alarming deterioration that has been registered in said area is unrelated to the amount of money that is invested, since it is a question of a phenomenon that is basically cultural, in the broad sense of the word, it has always been tempting to believe that the amount chosen reflects the degree of official concern about the issue. Of course, if it were that simple, increases in educational spending would always be followed by verifiable improvements in the academic performance of young people, but this is something that does not usually happen here or in other countries unless the increases are accompanied for the hierarchization of teaching so that it becomes, as in Finland, an elite profession whose prestige impresses students and their parents. Needless to say, the unions would not allow it; they want the “education workers” to settle for being good proletarians.
All those affected by the changes promoted by Massa they will insist that the cuts they have in mind for their particular sector will harm the whole. Sometimes, those who will speak like this will be right, but since, as things stand, current public spending is unsustainable in real terms, trying to maintain it would only serve to keep inflation jumping over one symbolic barrier after another. As much as sober economists claim to be convinced that the country is not in danger of suffering a new explosion hyperinflationary, it is forced remember that their equivalents said more or less the same thing when Raúl Alfonsín was in the Casa Rosada and, in a vain effort to educate his supporters, he announced the implementation of a “war economy” without believing in the need to radically modify his own ideas, which, deep down, were not so different from those claimed by the Kirchnerists who say they want Massa to stabilize the economy but oppose the unpleasant measures that could allow him to do so.
They are not the only ones. Although at this point the members of Together for Change they understand very well that there is a choice between a serious adjustment and a hyperinflationary tsunami, some are more than willing to go on the rampage with Massa when something that seems valuable to them is at stake. In other words, they are in favor of a general adjustment, but they are against many specific cuts. This attitude is shared by opposition politicians from virtually all countries; they want to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the economic conflict while continuing to appear as champions of fiscal responsibility. If one day they become part of a government, they will have to define themselves, but in the meantime they hope to continue reaping the benefits of adopting a position of principled ambiguity.
Like Macron, the new British Prime Minister Sunak he is trying to prepare his country for a period of perhaps extreme hardship in which he will be forced to make very unpleasant decisions that, of course, will be furiously repudiated by the many who swear to believe that austerity is always counterproductive. Could an Argentine politician afford to say the same thing? Mauricio Macri and those close to him believe so, since they imply that the government they plan to form after the upcoming elections will carry out drastic reforms of the type that, although it would deserve the approval of Macron and Sunakcould infuriate native “liberals” who in their opinion simply do not understand, or do not want to understand, the dimensions of the crisis that is devastating the country and how tremendously difficult it will be to prevent it from destroying it completely.
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