When he volunteered to take over the nation’s crumbling economy, Sergio Massa he will have thought that even mediocre management would serve to make him appear as the strongman of a government that is pathologically weak, while a failure would not hurt him too much since almost everyone would understand that another of its periodic disasters awaited the country and that, with luck, they would congratulate you for having the courage to try to prevent it. With everything, although it will have been very pleasant for him to understand that his mere presence in the ministry was enough to create the illusion that finally the government of the Fernandez would be able to restore some stability, the signs are multiplying that the truce thus made possible has come to an end. With no money in the national coffers, day by day the outlook for the economy grows bleaker.
Indeed, after a few months of relative calm attributable to the awareness that MassaUnlike Martin Guzman, he was not a political flyweight but a character with some influence in the circles of power, the markets have started to shake again. It goes without saying that the technical director of the team Massa, Gabriel Rubinsteindid not help by noticing that a clumsy devaluation would cause a Rodrigazo; It was his way of saying that any attempt to get out of the exchange labyrinth improvised by the Kirchnerists, with a different dollar for each activity, would have a devastating impact.
In the opinion of the most pragmatic of government officials, then, it is necessary to continue dodging reality with a view to postponing the inevitable until the government is in the hands of others who, after a honeymoon Even if it lasts a couple of minutes at most, they will have to pay the hefty political costs of an attempt, however timid, to discipline the wacky variables of an economy spinning out of control.
For years, orthodox local economists, accompanied by specialists from abroad who are interested in the bizarre vicissitudes of a self-absorbed country that refuses to take into account the experience of others, have been warning us that, sooner or later, a clash may occur. destructive similar to envisioned by Rubinstein.
The outlook has turned so dark of late that many believe the predicted collapse could happen very soon. Perhaps the only thing they wonder is if it will be before the elections scheduled for next year or after. The Kirchnerists and the other Peronists who, without wanting to or sharing their ideas, are reluctant to distance themselves from their administration, fear that the outbreak will occur while they are still in power, while the leaders of the different factions of Together for Change have reasons to hope that this is the case since, otherwise, they themselves will have to assume responsibility both for the damages they cause and for trying to handle an extreme situation without filing until further notice the profound reforms they say they have in mind.
When it comes to the economy, the majority attitude is resolutely schizophrenic. With the exception of those who benefit from venal corporatism that, in one way or another, has persisted since colonial times, everyone knows thatUnless there are drastic changes, Argentina as we know it will cease to be viable, but virtually no one is willing to allow themselves to be sacrificed for the common good. Thus those who aspire to form a government feel compelled to promise a kind of painless revolution in which everyone, except for a few characters who have had to play the undesirable role of the emblematic bad guys of the great national film, immediately find themselves among the winners.
It is a fantasy, of course, but it is one that, in the democratic world, all politicians are forced to pretend to respect. They can speak with eloquence vibrant with sweat and tears – but not with blood – knowing that there will be no mercy for those who dare to take seriously their own rhetoric in this regard.
Not only here but also in other latitudes, many say they despise politicians for their propensity to lie to the people before the elections, and then, if they have to explain themselves, claiming to be victims of a trap set by rivals who provided them with false information. . Be that as it may, the majority feeling is that even when professional politicians are not thieves prone to illicit enrichment, they are often dishonest subjects because it seems natural to them to make promises that they could never keep. Although those who think so are right, the matter is more complicated than they imply, since there are few gullible people who believe at face value in the public statements of candidates for political office. Before voting, they take into account their background, the image of the faction they belong to and try to measure the intensity of their commitment to the social group to which one belongs.
Although Alberto Fernández’s career suggests that those who insist, along with Aristotle, that man is the master of his silence and the slave of his words, are mistaken, politicians know that if they say something that could be considered controversial, their adversaries will not hesitate. to take advantage of it, which is why it is convenient for them to limit themselves to the usual nice banalities. With a touch of humor, Cristina once asserted that “you have to be afraid of God and a little bit of me”, which gave those who despise her evidence that she dreamed of installing a dictatorship; Something similar happened to Mauricio Macri when he alluded to the Teutonic “superior race,” as many Europeans, including Germans, sometimes sarcastically do, allowing haters to treat him as if he were an avowed neo-Nazi. It is ridiculous but, despite our regrets, everywhere the political conversation is like this, since for understandable reasons those responsible for governing or legislating prefer not to feel obligated to tell us how they intend to solve the extremely difficult dilemmas they must face.
The resistance to defining itself from the bulk of the political class is understandable; the country has entered a stage that threatens to be convulsive and that could mean the end of many careers. Battered by an inflationary hurricane, without money or credit to get essential inputs, the already weak industrial sector is in serious trouble, while the countryside has been hit by a drought similar to the one suffered when Macri was in power. With no funds to hand out, the government has no choice but to stealthily try to reduce excessive social spending, which, naturally, is greatly angering the piquetero organizations that were created to take advantage of official self-serving generosity.
The piqueteros are in a position to provoke an endless number of street excesses and occupy central areas of the Federal Capital for an indefinite period of time, but no matter how spectacular the “quilombo” they manage to do is, they will not be able to win the war that they are determined to wage, since The enemy to beat is not the supposed pettiness of people like the Ministers of Labor Kelly Olmos and Minister of Social Development Victoria Tolosa Paz, but rather the lack of genuine resources. Although the Government has proposed to try to calm the waters with new editions of the “platita plan” that it applied before the legislative elections, by doing so it will stimulate inflation even more and thus impoverish everyone more. It is not surprising, then, that the danger of a hyperinflationary explosion in the coming months is being raised with increasing frequency, which, according to some, would be enough to knock out an already reeling government.
From the Kirchnerist point of view, throwing in the towel prematurely would not be meaningless. At this point, the most realistic will understand that, even if they manage to surround Massa or his successor with the best economists on the planet, the mistrust is so deep that they will not be able to stop the deterioration of the economy and therefore of the situation. social, which would expose them to the risk of starring in an electoral debacle that is strikingly worse than that of last year.
For the Kirchnerists and the Peronists who for their own reasons have collaborated with them, the priority must be to persuade people that it is not their fault that Argentina is sinking. This is a challenge that at first sight is identical to the one faced by almost all the democratic governments of the world that coincide in attributing the reappearance of inflation after decades of monetary stability to the Covid pandemic followed by an energy crisis unleashed by imperialism. Russian, but here such excuses seem less plausible as the by no means arbitrary conviction has taken hold that the economic disaster is the culmination of decades of populist folly. Although there are signs that some Kirchnerists have come to the conclusion that it would be in their interest to make peace with the existing world and take a position that is less eccentric than usual, they cannot help but understand that it is too late. Unfortunately for them, the dice are cast.
