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sandensea

(21,530 posts)
2. Thank you for taking the time, Judi - and for your positive thinking
Sat Feb 27, 2021, 12:41 PM
Feb 2021

I know economic data can be boring - though you certainly navigate through it all quite well.

These last 5 years have surely been difficult for Argentina - as well as for Brazil, and (to a lesser extent) other countries in the region.

In Argentina's case, they got derailed starting in 2012 with vulture fund attacks on its bonds - which effectively cut the country off from foreign credit, and scared off a lot of investment both foreign and domestic.

This forced Cristina Kirchner to impose currency controls - which slowed the economy further (she had no choice).

But of course, Macri's dictatorship-style debt bubble was the real coup de grace.

Debt crises can sink developing countries for years (a whole decade, often), since these debts require hard-to-earn dollars to service.

That said, Martín Guzmán's successful refinance of a third ($66 bn) of the foreign debt last August, certainly helped brighten the horizon - and the economy's responding (much to Clarín's chagrin).

Guzmán's now trying to refinance the $45 billion Macri borrowed from the IMF - which the IMF was basically forced to lend to Macri by Trump (one of the biggest Trump scandals no one's talking about). But without Biden's ok, the IMF won't agree to a refinance - and neo-cons are pressuring him not to.

So we'll see.

Thanks as always for your time and input. Stay warm, and have a nice and restful weekend Judi.

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