Argentina is standing at the edge of a very very steep precipice. The “newly impoverished” voters who recently punished Macri at the polls, seem to have no idea of the kind of chaos and destruction they could unleash by allowing Cristina Kirchner and her family mafia to return to the Casa Rosada. It seems that regardless of how many criminal charges Kirchner, and family, and associates face, that the Argentine left is willing to forgive her.
What Argentine voters and the entire world must remember: Anibal Fernandez will not be running the country, should he prevail in the October election. Cristina Kirchner will be in charge of the show. The Argentine peso will plummet, inflation will skyrocket beyond where it is now, and corruption will reign supreme once more.
The elections last weekend were merely primary elections, with the candidates already determined by party mechanisms. But Macri’s loss to the Fernandez/Fernandez ticket by 15.5% sent shockwaves through Argentina, South America’s third largest economy behind Colombia and Brazil.
Ironically, and rather unfairly, Macri will now be further punished in the two month runup to the first round of the presidential election…not specifically for things that he did, but because investors and global markets are so spooked by the return of Kirchner that they have been rapidly pulling money out of Argentine assets just as fast as they can.
Anibal Fernandez is perhaps the greatest fool to ever throw his hat into the ring for a presidential election outside of Venezuela. In a move that should convince absolutely no one who has spent even an hour reading about the recent economic history, Fernandez hilariously declared that Argentina’s market meltdown was a reaction to Macri’s policies.
That would be quite a coincidence wouldn’t it? The markets have had the better part of three years to punish Macri, and they have. Macri’s administration has hardly been perfect or blameless in managing the economy. But the prospect of the Peronists returning to power is far worse.
Fernandez actually expects us to believe that, coincidentally, the day after 47% of Argentines turned out to the polls to support him, and the markets tanked, that it was Macri’s fault? Not even Fernandez’s elementary school-aged son or nephew would believe that.
Here it is in Fernandez”s own words: “Markets react badly when they realize they were scammed. We are living a fictitious economy and the government is not giving answers.”
To quote my favorite Venezuelan dictator: “Que falta de seriedad!” (Let’s get serious here).
Argentina was once the wealthiest country in the world, or at least one of them, depending upon how it is measured. This was only 120 years, at the turn of the 20th century. Since then, Argentina has served as a real-life case study for how not to manage an economy. Unsurprisingly (particularly for those inclined to classical liberal economics), state intervention looms large in just about every government policy taken since then.
Nowhere was this more epitomized than in the rule of strongman Juan Peron, whose wife Eva “Evita” was idolized and adored by the working class. Sadly, lives did not improve for the Argentine working class because of Peronist policies. Now, Cristina Kirchner inherits the Peronist legacy, and the Argentine people should be prepared once again for hyperinflation and currency meltdown.
During her last administration, Kirchner was so worried about inflation and the risks it posed to her rule, that she made it a criminal offense to publish statistics on inflation. Yes, imagine that.
Imagine if Donald Trump or Emmanuel Macron said, “Gee, you know what, we don’t like where our GDP is headed for next year, so here’s what we’re going to do. Let’s just make it a crime to report anything about GDP figures if we don’t like it.”
Beyond the pale! Now, the Argentines are prepared to return this utter maniac to office. And there is a simple reason for that. As Kirchner and all populist leftists understands very well, it is far easier to buy the poor than the rich with bread and circuses. She will do absolutely anything to buy the votes of the working class, and non-working class.
People, in general, are very inclined to vote for whoever promises to do what is best for them, not best for the good of the nation. Kirchner is just like a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren in the American context: we will blame all of our problems on the rich, and then via the concept of Marxist redistribution, we will take their money, to give it to the poor and working class so they will vote for us.
If Kirchner returns to power, the Argentine people have no idea of the terrors that await them come 2020.