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Argentina's Subsidy Policy Raises the Specter of Nationalization
Beyond the political uproar caused by the loss of control of the Argentinean parliament by the Kirchners in the legislative elections held last Sunday, some economic indicators are beginning to worry experts — increasing informal employment, declining demand for labor, increased state subsidies and a growing number of companies that are in crisis and risk being privatized.
More than 77,000 workers in various industries receive a monthly salary of US$160 through Argentine government subsidies. The goal is to prevent those people from losing their jobs. The more than 53,000 companies affected by this program are bankrupt. So far this year, the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has spent some US$48 million on the program, known as REPRO (the Federal Productive Reconversion Program) and created in 2002 by then-president Eduardo Duhalde amid the deepest social and economic crisis in the history of Argentina. At the time, the government of Fernando de la Rua had fallen, bank deposits had been confiscated and the Argentine currency had been devalued.
Although the current crisis is not as serious as that one, employment is one of the indicators beginning to suffer the consequences of the deterioration in the local and global economy. Through the subsidies authorized by REPRO, the administration of Fernández de Kirchner avoided a half-point rise in unemployment, now at 8.4%, according to INDEC, the National Institute of Statistics and Census. The official figures don't include any social spending plans. According to critics of INDEC, the government has intervened under the supervision of Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno and changed the methodology for measuring unemployment. INDEC's credibility has been further challenged by private reports that predict unemployment of about 10% by the end of the year. >>> Go to Full Story >>>
By PETER KAMINSKY / The New York Times
Trout Fresh From the Sea at the End of the Earth in Argentina
We paused at the mouth of the Irigoyen River where it empties into the steel blue waters of the southernmost Atlantic, or Mar Austral, about 700 miles (as the albatross flies) from Antarctica. Across the river, two gauchos on horseback and a pack of dogs attempted to cut out a pair of bulls from a herd of wild cattle. Men, dogs, horses and cattle crashed down the bank, crossing the river about a hundred yards from us.
They thundered across the pasture and charged up a dune at the ocean’s edge. The gauchos worked their lariats in wide loops that caught the late afternoon sun as they tried to lasso the fierce bulls. And then, like the roar of a passing freight train that trails off in the distance, the melee disappeared and we returned to fishing.
Fishing the Irigoyen is a different ballgame from the much larger, and more famous, Rio Grande, where I caught some very big sea trout on earlier trips to Tierra. The Irigoyen has high banks and large stands of native lenga trees (they look like wind-bent scrub oaks), which serve as a windbreak; you are, for the most part, spared the polar gales that scour the steppes through which the Rio Grande flows. The Irigoyen is also a smaller river, which means that there is no need for ungainly double-handed spey rods and 100-foot casts. >>> Go to Full Story >>>