Malvinas/Falklands has always been a national claim, that has been brought to every possible international forum, for decades before the war in 1982, and of course, also after the war... So, that's not news.
The current overall economic situation is not as terrible as it may seem from outside. The main problem is that because of the high inflation, people try to have their savings in other currencies, but the government put restrictions on the amount of foreign money that can be bought. Sadly, tax evasion is commonplace here, so, it's hard to prove the origin of the money, and thus making it an impediment to buy US dollars.
But the overall situation is very complex. I have always said that the main problem in Argentina is that culturally, Argentine businessmen always try to make money selling a few products at a high price, instead of selling a lot of products at smaller prices (scale economy). And there's no focus on trying to change that mentality. That makes the local industry totally noncompetitive, and thus, the government has to rely in protectionist policies to prevent importers from flooding the local market with chinese products, that would simply destroy the local jobs (it has happened before, in the '80s, then again in the '90s).
As an example, you have some plain stupid policies, like having the electronics factories in the furthest possible place (Tierra del Fuego, the island just at the end of the continent!), far away from the consumption centers, making the prices go up as they have to move the manufacturing parts from Buenos Aires, to Tierra del Fuego, and then, the manufactured goods back to Tierra del Fuego/Cordoba. That's 3100 miles by road!
This kind of policies render the commendable idea of helping the local industry develop, totally useless because those industries will never be competitive.
On the other hand, historically, the main source of wealth in this country has always being agriculture. But sadly, since the 1800's, almost 80% of the country has been in the hands of a few families. Currently, 2000 families own almost all of the fields. And sadly, in the last 10 years, they stopped producing a lot of products (wheat, fruits, livestock), replacing most of the production with soybeans. That resulted in a huge increase in prices, something unthinkable in a food-producing country like this.
That, added to the fact that historically those families operate usually operate this way:
They sell the products through a shell company in some tax heaven country, thus declaring much lower earnings here (evading local taxes). Of course, this kind of behavior is possible because of the ever-existing corruption. Anyways, the money that they do bring here, is usually moved anyway to offshore bank accounts (generally luxemburg, switzerland or uruguay). Capital flight then becomes a common practice.
A few years ago, the government paid its debt to the IMF, and because it would have to eventually pay most of the debt to the remaining creditors, and its debt is adjusted by the inflation index they declare, they started forging that index. They did it by printing money, used to internal payments to government employees. Internally, as salaries were raised anually at the same level of inflation, it didn't change much to the average people. But in the long run, it affects business, as companies stop trusting the country, so they stop investing here.
As the government had to afford some payments this year to finally complete payments from the 2001 crisis (Boden 2012), they tried to stop this capital flight, but instead of doing it gradually, they did it in a shockingly fast way.
That generated a lot of social discontent in the middle classes. And of course, people are just sick high levels of the corruption and impunity. Some judges, just act as lackeys of the government, absolving government employees involved in public corruption scandals, even when there's a lot of evidence to make them go to prison.
And finally, Media conglomerates that have an enormous amount of power are fighting its own war against the government, that again, even when they are trying to implement an understandable law to replace one from the time of the last dictatorship, the small amount of time given to split the "monopolies", escalated everything.
Interestingly, even with all of this, the overall economic situation is not that bad, people still have their jobs, there are not massive layouts as seen in Europe, salaries grow at the same rate as inflation, compensating it. People is still consuming and is expected that in 2013 the economy is growing more, as Brazil gets better.
But the manner of this government is what makes people sick. They have a very authoritarian way of imposing their agenda. It's like if for them, the end justifies the means. Other parties, even when they could share some of the objectives, prefer other ways to do things, but the opposition is totally fragmented, so the officialism has all the way clear to act as they please.
-
To summarize:
- Noncompetitive industry.
- Wrong way of thinking about business (gain by product instead of by scale).
- Unpatriotic landowners, masters in tax evasion
- Widespread corruption.
- Plain Stupid Policies
- Flawed legal system, with corrupted judges
Makes a once-great country, a languishing country that every time it seems to be about to stand again, it falls to the floor and ignites... just to start from scratch again, like a recurring fenix.
Hope it helps to understand us a little bit more :)
As an anecdote, after the 2001 crisis, this country was literally broke, there were no reserves, no money left, while, at the same time, the IMF was trying to prove some 'new theories' and Argentina became the perfect experiment. After rejecting a debt-exchange, default was the only option.
That's where this kind of vulture funds get in the picture. Their modus operandi is simple: buy debt for cents (in this case, defaulted bonds), knowing that a large country like Argentina, very rich in natural resources would eventually recover, and then try to get paid the full price. Good luck with that.
Most of them are from Spanish origin, "familias patricias" - "patrician families" that were here and were somewhat powerful at the time when we were still a colony, our independence in 1816 or in the following decades, during the War of the Triple Alliance [1], and later at the Conquest of the Desert[2].
However, during the last two decades, there's being a new wave of landowners, mostly from USA, Italy, Chile, England, Israel, etc.
Benetton and Douglas Tompkins are two cases of foreigners buying LARGE amounts of land.
It has become a big problem, because they bought lots of strategic locations (periglacial lands, river sources, estuaries, etc), and then blocked access to water and other resources to people downriver, turning those lands sterile, and then buying them at vile prices.
This was so severe, that a new law was made on February 2012 [3], limiting the amount of land owned by foreign people/companies to 15% of the country.
[1] A war between Paraguay vs an alliance of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay that resulted in the death of 90% of the Paraguayan people at the time. Very Sad. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War
Malvinas/Falklands has always been a national claim, that has been brought to every possible international forum, for decades before the war in 1982, and of course, also after the war... So, that's not news.
The current overall economic situation is not as terrible as it may seem from outside. The main problem is that because of the high inflation, people try to have their savings in other currencies, but the government put restrictions on the amount of foreign money that can be bought. Sadly, tax evasion is commonplace here, so, it's hard to prove the origin of the money, and thus making it an impediment to buy US dollars.
But the overall situation is very complex. I have always said that the main problem in Argentina is that culturally, Argentine businessmen always try to make money selling a few products at a high price, instead of selling a lot of products at smaller prices (scale economy). And there's no focus on trying to change that mentality. That makes the local industry totally noncompetitive, and thus, the government has to rely in protectionist policies to prevent importers from flooding the local market with chinese products, that would simply destroy the local jobs (it has happened before, in the '80s, then again in the '90s).
As an example, you have some plain stupid policies, like having the electronics factories in the furthest possible place (Tierra del Fuego, the island just at the end of the continent!), far away from the consumption centers, making the prices go up as they have to move the manufacturing parts from Buenos Aires, to Tierra del Fuego, and then, the manufactured goods back to Tierra del Fuego/Cordoba. That's 3100 miles by road!
This kind of policies render the commendable idea of helping the local industry develop, totally useless because those industries will never be competitive.
On the other hand, historically, the main source of wealth in this country has always being agriculture. But sadly, since the 1800's, almost 80% of the country has been in the hands of a few families. Currently, 2000 families own almost all of the fields. And sadly, in the last 10 years, they stopped producing a lot of products (wheat, fruits, livestock), replacing most of the production with soybeans. That resulted in a huge increase in prices, something unthinkable in a food-producing country like this.
That, added to the fact that historically those families operate usually operate this way: They sell the products through a shell company in some tax heaven country, thus declaring much lower earnings here (evading local taxes). Of course, this kind of behavior is possible because of the ever-existing corruption. Anyways, the money that they do bring here, is usually moved anyway to offshore bank accounts (generally luxemburg, switzerland or uruguay). Capital flight then becomes a common practice.
A few years ago, the government paid its debt to the IMF, and because it would have to eventually pay most of the debt to the remaining creditors, and its debt is adjusted by the inflation index they declare, they started forging that index. They did it by printing money, used to internal payments to government employees. Internally, as salaries were raised anually at the same level of inflation, it didn't change much to the average people. But in the long run, it affects business, as companies stop trusting the country, so they stop investing here.
As the government had to afford some payments this year to finally complete payments from the 2001 crisis (Boden 2012), they tried to stop this capital flight, but instead of doing it gradually, they did it in a shockingly fast way.
That generated a lot of social discontent in the middle classes. And of course, people are just sick high levels of the corruption and impunity. Some judges, just act as lackeys of the government, absolving government employees involved in public corruption scandals, even when there's a lot of evidence to make them go to prison.
And finally, Media conglomerates that have an enormous amount of power are fighting its own war against the government, that again, even when they are trying to implement an understandable law to replace one from the time of the last dictatorship, the small amount of time given to split the "monopolies", escalated everything.
Interestingly, even with all of this, the overall economic situation is not that bad, people still have their jobs, there are not massive layouts as seen in Europe, salaries grow at the same rate as inflation, compensating it. People is still consuming and is expected that in 2013 the economy is growing more, as Brazil gets better.
But the manner of this government is what makes people sick. They have a very authoritarian way of imposing their agenda. It's like if for them, the end justifies the means. Other parties, even when they could share some of the objectives, prefer other ways to do things, but the opposition is totally fragmented, so the officialism has all the way clear to act as they please.
-
To summarize:
- Noncompetitive industry.
- Wrong way of thinking about business (gain by product instead of by scale).
- Unpatriotic landowners, masters in tax evasion
- Widespread corruption.
- Plain Stupid Policies
- Flawed legal system, with corrupted judges
Makes a once-great country, a languishing country that every time it seems to be about to stand again, it falls to the floor and ignites... just to start from scratch again, like a recurring fenix.
Hope it helps to understand us a little bit more :)
As an anecdote, after the 2001 crisis, this country was literally broke, there were no reserves, no money left, while, at the same time, the IMF was trying to prove some 'new theories' and Argentina became the perfect experiment. After rejecting a debt-exchange, default was the only option.
That's where this kind of vulture funds get in the picture. Their modus operandi is simple: buy debt for cents (in this case, defaulted bonds), knowing that a large country like Argentina, very rich in natural resources would eventually recover, and then try to get paid the full price. Good luck with that.