Capitalism according to Cristina Kirchner: a distorted vision

"Good capitalists want people to earn well and have jobs, because if not who buys them things, they call capitalists and you can not buy anything, you can not travel, you can not buy clothes or go to the supermarket, I am much more capitalist than them.
With me, there was capitalism, please! "

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

was well expressed in the last presentation of his bestseller

Sincerely

on Saturday in Rio Gallegos, perhaps seeking to criticize the government both from the left and the right, with a particular and Manichean idea of ​​what capitalism is for it.

"They are not really good capitalists," he had begun to respond to the intervention of his
partner In these presentations, the writer Marcelo Figueras, who had asked him what he thought of the businessmen who want "to be able to separate when they want, as they please, without giving in". explanation".

In a somewhat reduced vision, the Vice-President of the All Front seemed to simplify the problem in which, as there was a lot of private consumption, capitalism flourished.

In fact, the incentive to consume was created (again in Argentina) in which, although there are tax resources to provide subsidies, utility tariffs (among others) could be kept frozen.

Logically, capitalism, whatever the place where everyone stops to badyze it or even call it a system, is much more than that. And the two efforts of the former president (2007-2015) amply demonstrated that he was not respecting his rules. To know:

A quick overview of this time reminds us that far from free competition in the market, the FPV government had for Guillermo Moreno (then Secretary of Internal Trade) one of his main weapons. From this organization, it was decided who could export and who could import. Thus, for example, some companies needing foreign inputs for their production process have been forced to deal with activities far removed from their specialty "because even I, I seize you on the market", promised the ineffable manager. Of course, to import, one had to get into the tangle of impregnable import declarations, among other regulations. The chapter of the manipulation of the Indec (which, remember, was not only the work of the evil Moreno, but "some one" above him and endorsed with political responsibility) is sufficiently known to abound here.

As in a game of tongs, the intervention on different markets under the pretext of "take care of the table of Argentines" has discouraged exportable local production, as in the agricultural and energy sector. By the way, Cristina told Rio Gallegos that her government had "taken care of energy autonomy", while the reality was totally opposite. In fact, only this year (or the next) Argentina will still have a surplus in this area.

These deficits then led to the installation of the famous "exchange rate trap", another measure that was not precisely "capitalist".

Beyond the mistakes of the Macri management, there is no doubt that the overheating of consumption and not the investment and production, as practiced by Kirchnerism, is a very short-range policy.

His leadership was "a capitalism without a market and a socialism without plan," commented a prominent economist last night, paraphrasing the badysis made by Adolfo Sturzenegger (father of the former president of the Central Bank, Federico) on the 80s of the country.

Who would be the "good capitalist entrepreneurs" of Cristina Kirchner? Those who favored public works and who today are walking in the courts and prisons thanks to the notebooks? The "friends" who have benefited from the highest levels of commercial protection? "The capitalism of friends is a form of capitalism, but not the most appropriate for the growth and equitable distribution of income," simplified the economist.

There is no doubt that the government should also openly debate the economic situation. If we must first clean the accounts for growth (Macri option) or encourage growth (by consumption), so that with more tax resources, the debt can be repaid, as promised now Alberto Fernández .

What no one can say is where the resources will come from, what Argentine politics usually ignore.