OT- Argentina, what a country!

[Andrés]

I'd like to be able to tell you we're better now, but it looks like things are about to explode again soon.
I think that the main problem is that nothing has happened.
Recession has been only worsening during all this time.
The government keeps announcing new economic plans every week what only increases incertitude.
The only thing that Duhalde did shortly after assuming as president was devaluate.
We now know that one of our problems was that our currency was overvalued, devaluation could have been good, if it was a part of a plan. Instead all it did is trigger our old friend the inflation. The only thing holding off hyperinflation (like we had in the early 90s) is the recession.
The bank "corralito" is still up. Now they came up with a "tapón" law to prevent people from getting their savings with a judicial order.

Last week they wanted to cover bank debts with state emitted "bonex", what means again the state covering debts of power friend's private companies and stealing our savings to pay.
Now it seems that each bank will emit its own "bono", so we'll have hundreds of useless papers going around.
They told us to trust banks and to trust our money like people from most other countries do. Now we're paying the price for believing them. Our experience has tough us once more than the only safe way to keep your savings it to buy dollars and hide them at home.

It seems that the only ideas were to put exigencies from the IMF, and how to increase their fund-raising for the state (mostly by increasing taxes) and not how to reactivate internal economy.

[ 29 April 2002: Message edited by: Andrés Lescano ]