Fear of the return of CFK and another populist cycle in the region, the reasons behind the IMF's approval of Central Bank interventions

The White House is reading the same thing as Wall Street: the best scenario for the next four years in Argentina comes from the hand of Mauricio Macri. The alternative of returning to power by Cristina Kirchner, a possibility that seemed remote until very recently and that went bankrupt in market calculations, would be from her point of view a regrettable regression compared to the recent past of the dominant populists in Latin America.

This view explains, according to local badysts, the approval of the latest test on monetary policy. The reasoning is linear: If the presidential reelection is tied to the stability of the dollar, a presumption accepted as true, the central bank must be able to do all that is necessary to ensure that stability.

The margin of the Fund's technicians was more related to political than economic reasons: The North American Treasury Department, commissioned by Steven Mnuchin, gave much weight to the arguments that Argentine civilians made to IMF officialsas reported yesterday. "The order came from above," he summed up. Infobae a local expert who puts words to what the body can not say.

In an emergency, they add another element that they perceive with disbelief both on the New York and Washington markets.. It does not appear in Argentina, six months before the elections, a third discord able to break the binary pattern with which the policy of Argentina is inevitably read. Thus, the current options are only two: the continuity of current management (and the alliance with the United States) or an uncertain scenario, which can place the country next to Nicolás Maduro's Venezuela.

"Losing Argentina as an ally would be painful", he said Infobae Benjamin Gedan, Latin American Specialist and Project Director Argentina Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington. "The United States and two jurisdictions have identified Mauricio Macri as a key partner in a number of issues, including Venezuela, and see its market reforms as a bulwark against populist experiences in the region," he added. .

A return to these practices in South America's second largest economy "would constitute a significant setback for American interests in Latin America, particularly if Cambiemos was replaced by an anti-American government," said Gedan. The Kirchner decade still brings bitter memories.

In Wall Street badysts' badessments, this possibility is badociated with ongoing tensions between the United States and Mexico'sManuel López Obrador and the lack of guarantees offered Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, whose government of a few months already shows internal fissures of consequences difficult to foresee.

That is to say that the three major Latin American countries raise issues that worry the United States. Added to this is the concern over the lack of progress in Venezuela and Nicaragua and the very likely reelection of Evo Morales in Bolivia. The case of Argentina is testing the US government's willingness to do something about it.