By Jaime Ortega.
December is still a sensitive month in Argentina . The holidays arrive followed by the summer holidays and is more evident when social inequalities become latent after hundreds of youngsters ransacked shops all over Buenos Aires.
It was in the great crisis of December 2001 when it produced the highest looting the country is ever experienced. In the race of holding wages and inflation, wages tend to get exhausted by year-end because most of the agreements are signed in the first half . The economic situation has improved a lot since 2001. But in 2011 it began to be rumored that there could be more lootings as inflation kept going up. The government refused and kept the official price statistics around 10 , but the private consultants estimated at around 25%.
In September 2012 , a student at Harvard University asked President Cristina Fernandez for inflation. She said, ” If the numbers of inflation were from 25% to 26% the country would blow up in the air.” Three months later, in December 2012 , looting broke out in the city of Bariloche, and spread by other municipalities that killed at least four people .
Cristina Fernández then saw the hand of some union Peronist facing the Government . “We have fires in our forests and also have some out there who want to start fires . ( … ) This attempt has become the decadent version of what happened on December 2001 – . ( … ) And the fact that those were not spontaneous lootings that ended very badly and forced the early departure of Dr. Raúl Alfonsín . ”
The economy suffers from a lack of concern currency . No foreign investments fall
Now, in addition to inflation , the economy suffers a lack of concern to its currency . It does not enter foreign outside investments . The government has done everything from late 2011 to no longer abound foreign investors, at least not the dollars that trade abroad.
The country is loaded with taxes from up to 35 % card purchases from abroad visitors and has even passed a law that allows those who launder their dollars to become illegal. The president proposed ” pesificar ” the economy , encouraged savers to buy pesos with dollars. To give such weight became three million dollars had a fixed deposit . But the vast majority of Argentines continued their distrust ability to save on weight and saving dollars.
Between many problems, the foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank fell from 52,000 million dollars in 2010 and has recently reached up to 31,000 million. The new economic cabinet created by Cristina Fernandez has proposed to combat the shortage of foreign exchange trades . One way is to go get credits from China, where the economy minister , Axel Kicillof resides. i
Another way is to lead gradually to the devalue of the peso depreciation against the dollar. Whereupon, the citizen find that their pesos are worth increasingly less than a few years ago. And the government is increasingly using less resources to keep pace with wage inflation. If GDP growth in 2011 was around 7% today private consulting estimates it between 3% and 4% .
Nevertheless , even the most critical of the Government economists believe that there is no real objective conditions for a financial meltdown to the one experienced on December 2001.
