Nick Hood says Argentina's president is now so unpopular that the locals are offering to swap her for Gordon Brown.
As the Eurozone grapples with the potential contagion from the troubles of Greece, Portugal, Spain and other enfeebled debt-ridden EU jurisdictions, it can be comforting to spend time in a country that knows a thing or two about financial crises.
Welcome to Buenos Aires, capital of one of the world’s serial sovereign debt defaulters - currently on its seventh different currency of the past century or so. The official inflation figure is 7.7%; private estimates suggest that the real number is double that. The MerVal stock exchange index has shed 5.8% in the past week and the peso is sliding (although not nearly as badly as it might if the US dollar was stronger).
Argentina faces debt obligations of $15bn this year and is hobbled by its exclusion from international debt markets following its last debt default back in 2002. But the government, led by the deeply unpopular President, Mrs Fernández de Kirchner, has found a simple solution. Having previously nationalised private pension schemes, it is now proposing to raid the Central Bank’s $6.6bn foreign currency reserves to plug part of this gap.
When the Central Bank chief objected, he was removed by the President - after a month of stubborn resistance - and replaced, unsurprisingly by a close ally of the ruling party. The President, universally referred to by her first name, Christina, by Argentines (usually with an ugly sneer in their voices), has approval ratings below 20% and has been offered to your correspondent by a number of locals as a direct swap for Gordon Brown, which speaks volumes.
The IMF would like to help, but complains that Argentina will not co-operate with the formalities; it's the only G20 member country not to have received an IMF visit since 2006, when, incidentally, it unilaterally cancelled all pending debts owed to the IMF. It may be unfortunate that the IMF official responsible for any dialogue is the former finance minister in Chile, with whom Argentina has a notoriously prickly relationship.
The twin pillars of the Argentine economy are tourism and agriculture - specifically beef production. Despite the presence of hordes of noisy Americans in airports and hotels from El Calafate near the glaciers in the South, through the picturesque Lake District, on into the wine region of Mendoza and up to the stunning Iguazu Falls on the Brazilian and Paraguayan borders, holidaymakers are thin on the ground. A boutique hotel in Bariloche had only two rooms occupied out of twelve, and restaurants generally are half-full at the very best.
As for the beef industry, the core of Argentine culture and provider of wondrous steaks to millions of Asador barbecues each week, it is in disarray. The Buenos Aires City Butchers Association has called this week for Christina to 'normalize' the situation, complaining that prices had become unaffordable for the average consumer. Nationalisation seems to be a step too far, but some cynics pray that she may copy Marie Antoinette’s famous suggestion - 'let them eat cake' - and suffer a similar fate.
