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Argentina’s ruling Peronist party suffered sweeping defeats last week during the country’s midterm primary and political observers point to Buenos Aires’ decision to enforce strict COVID-19 lockdowns that did a better job at stopping its economic growth than preventing infections.
“We know there’s a lot of sadness and pain in the country, and not a lot to celebrate,” Maria Eugenia Vidal, an opposition party leader, said, according to the Financial Times. “But today we made the first step toward change.”
President Alberto Fernandez was left licking his wounds after the vote and could see his center-left party relinquish Congress to an attack from the right. The Trends Journal has pointed out in recent issues that Buenos Aires has been dealing with an economic crisis for years. (See: “ARGENTINA: BORROWED MONEY, BORROWED TIME,” “ARGENTINA: FLAT BROKE,” and “ARGENTINA: INFLATION SKYROCKETS, ECONOMY TAILSPINS.”)
The FT reported that the government seemed to pay at the polls for failing to “deliver on its promises of curbing inflation, improving salaries, and boosting the economy.” A draft budget for the country revealed that its economy is expected to grow 4 percent in 2022 while inflation will hit 33 percent, according to Reuters. The country sees annual inflation of over 50 percent and there is double-digit unemployment. The Economist reported that some Peronist strongholds flipped, which prompted Fernandez to say, “Evidently, we have not done something right.”
The magazine pointed out that the presidential election in the country is scheduled for 2023 and said candidates who earned the support of Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, the Buenos Aires mayor, did well, which means he may have a chance at a national election.
TREND FORECAST: President Fernandez said at the beginning of the COVID War that he would prefer “10 percent more poor people than 100,000 dead,” the Economist reported, and said that “in the end, Argentina got both.” The country had 110,000 deaths from the virus and its GDP contracted by nearly 10 percent.
Indeed, despite being one of the hardest lockdown nations of the world, the draconian policies that destroyed millions of lives and livelihoods, was a tragic failure. Yet, these facts of lockdown failures and the disastrous human suffering they have caused… politicians and their flunky “health official” who make up these mandates are never taken to task by the media Presstitutes.
TREND FORECAST: On the economic front, Argentinians will be hit with a slowing economy, higher inflation, and a weakening peso. This year, Argentina’s peso has fallen nearly 55 percent against the dollar.
Yesterday, as Alberto Fernandez swore in new cabinet ministers, Argentina’s dollar bonds and U.S.-traded equities dove with bonds due in 2041 falling 1.4 cents to 36.8 cents on the dollar, according to Bloomberg, while the unofficial peso exchange rate, known as the blue-chip swap, weakened 1.5 percent to 184 pesos per dollar. Bloomberg also reported that U.S.-traded shares also fell as much as 13 percent, with the local benchmark index posting the worst returns among indexes in the Americas amid a global selloff.
Therefore, as economic conditions continue to deteriorate—regardless of what political party takes power—the crime rates, social unrest, street protests and anti-government demonstrations will dramatically escalate.