Ezequiel Burgo
05/26/2021 10:12 PM
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 05/26/2021 10:12 PM
In the movie Catch Me If You Can (2002), Tom Hanks plays an FBI agent who goes after a scammer, Leonardo Di Caprio.
The story shows a fugitive who
not only escapes but enjoys
.
The history between Argentina and the IMF (not the FBI) could be framed in the same dynamic:
one persecutes and the other seeks to escape
the rules.
Even its leaders proclaim it so, like the Kirchnerism document on Tuesday that calls for not paying.
This did not start with Alberto Fernández, who we remember, asks the IMF to refinance the debt for more than 10 years, lower the surcharge, postpone Article IV, modify the distribution of the SDR, in addition to having requested a special statement to say that the debt was not sustainable.
If there is an origin, it may come from 1954. After several comings and goings of Juan Perón with the IMF (first he adhered to his incorporation and then he froze it), the then president (who was looking for dollars) received the head of the World Bank in Buenos Aires .
And he told him that he wanted to join the IMF.
Eugene Black replied that it would be a pleasure.
He had to eliminate exchange controls, the different dollars that were available and, above all, allow Washington to access the statistics that since 1948 his government had stopped publishing regularly.
"The IMF demanded a compilation of reliable statistics destined to be published annually in the International Financial Statistics," says
Raúl García Heras, a researcher at the UBA and the Di Tella Institute, an expert on the history of Argentina, the IMF and the Paris Club. For this researcher, Peronism did not delay its entry into the IMF due to a question of
economic independence
as Antonio Cafiero once bellowed and now Kirchnerism replies.
“Peronism discovered that if it wanted to access the World Bank's postwar heavy industry infrastructure plans, which
Mexico
and
Brazil
already received, it had to enter the IMF and for that.
basic requirements had to be met, including providing reliable statistics
”
.
Curious: another example of how neighboring countries access goods and services from the world but Argentina does not because it refuses to follow the established steps.
In 2009, Amado Boudou traveled to Istanbul, to the IMF Assembly.
There he asked to start a program with the IMF.
Dominique Strauss Kahn, like Black to Perón, said
“No problem”
.
And he gave him the list:
fix the Paris Club, holdouts, support the capitalization of the IMF and make an article IV
.
Boudou said okay.
The next day Néstor Kirchner called Boudou to his hotel room in Istanbul and clarified: there was no way he was going to see a mission in Buenos Aires.
The Indec was already intervened.
Almost 70 years later, Georgieva and Cristina are like Hanks and Di Caprio. One runs after the other. And
Cristina doesn't seem uncomfortable
.