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The IMF censures countries that hide economic information or disseminate unreliable statistics, as it has done with Argentina for several years during the kirchnerist political cycle. Now, he argues that the Central Bank is hiding the reasons for the daily change in international reserves, in order to conceal the settlement in dollars to finance the flight of capital. This double standard would reflect that his observations with technical pretense and institutional cleanliness are eminently political. The IMF has explicitly stated in its statute that the dollars it lends to countries can not be used to meet the speculative demand for foreign exchange. Disconcerting, he allowed Guido Sandleris's Central Bank to draw lots of dollars initially delivered on the market to guarantee the payment of interest and principal of the debt. Abandon the owners of government securities, which only worsen the specter of default, pursue a difficult goal to achieve: curb the dollarization of the months preceding the election of the President 2020-2023. Both measures being desperate, the International Monetary Fund, or the United States, is not only the main backer of the ruling party's election campaign. He has also become the most powerful political supporter of Macrism at a time when the Cambiemos alliance breaks down relentlessly, with radicals on the run, Elisa Carrió scare the electorate and internal PRO lines that want Mauricio Macri to take over a step aside to preserve a certain margin of competitiveness during elections.

The IMF has once again come to the rescue of a Macri stuck by the dollar and on the edge of the chasm. It is a political decision that he did not have at the time with the government of Raúl Alfonsín (1989) or with that of Fernando de la Rúa (2001), for which he released his hand precipitating a crisis of proportions. With the flexibilisation of the rule of sale of dollars from the Central Bank, the political party IMF Macri is consolidated to compete in the next presidential election.

Liquidation

The Fund's managing director, Christine Lagarde, dismissed former Central Bank President Luis Caputo after liquidating some $ 13,500 million of unauthorized reserves – from the IMF. This crisis caused the collapse of the first agreement with Argentina, subsequently reversed in another agreement defining a space of exchange without intervention and the prohibition to use the loans of more than 57 billion dollars to face the volatility of the foreign exchange market. This policy has now been thrown into the basket, adding to the series of failures accumulated by the Central Bank since the Federico Sturzenegger-Lucas Llach duo, including Luis Caputo-Gustavo Cañonero and now Guido Sandleris-Verónica Rappoport . It may be that some of them only have the Twitter social network to feed the irony and self-esteem, because the succession of fiascos in the administration of monetary policy and The exchange rate policy during these years of macrismo was shocking.

With the sole objective of reaching the elections, the OSPP, with the exchange rate relatively controlled, and then the first round in October without inflationary exchange or overflow, the Central Bank announced that she would go back to wasting money to satisfy Greenback's request. As reported by David Cufré in this newspaper, Sturzenegger has delivered to the market about $ 12 billion and Caputo, the aforementioned $ 13,500 million; 25 500 million dollars in a few months without being able to tame exchange rate parity. Sandleris is trying to hide how many people will liquidate by ending the information provided by the recipient country for more than 25 years, but this will be a fact that will eventually be known. In the BCRA's accounting register, there are about $ 71 billion in reserves, but those that are actually available exceed just over $ 17 billion. Sandleris could then join the historic podium of the titles of the Central who emptied with the orthodox fanaticism the box of reserves in favor of the beasts dollars.

In announcing the first and second agreements, the government and the IMF have bet that by simply introducing it, they would change the expectations of the international capital market and allow the Macrista economy to incur debt by issuing debt. public bonds. This game did not work. On the contrary, either because of inaptitude in the daily management of macro-feeling, or by the loss of confidence in a government which has been announced as the one who has come to change history and whose only end result is the despair of the self-inflicted crisis, the country risk He began to climb and did not stop his walk before reaching the maximum of 1000 points.

Being distracted or misinformed about the financial history of recent decades, being adopted by the IMF is not a guarantee of quality or trust for investors. An economy tied to an IMF line of credit reveals that it is broken and that the financial bailout has the function of avoiding an impending cessation of payments, without however eliminating the danger.

In deciding to free the hands of the Central Bank so that it can intervene without limit on the foreign exchange market, the government and the IMF and the United States have repeated the same strategy. Make an unexpected game, countered by the techno-bureaucracy of the Fund, to allow the liquidation of dollars in the hope of changing the trend of the market. They expect the announcement to discourage dollarization and speculation that there will be a sharp devaluation. The promise is that there will be quantitative dollar sales with the mission to keep currency exchange under control, offering banks the temptation of a Leliq interest rate of 74% per annum , renewable every seven days. , which implies an effective annual rate of 105% with a capitalization at each maturity. The official invitation is to ride on an infernal financial bike.

geopolitics

IMF technicians were again disapproved because they did not agree to let the Central Bank of Macri squander its reserves again. By ideological conception, they are supporters of the free exchange rate and, according to the institutional norms of the Fund's own statute, they could not guarantee the sale of the dollars of a stand-by credit to witness the flight of capital. A recent report by the consulting firm Emmanuel Alvarez Agis echoed the text of this operating rule in the IMF's statutes. Article VI Capital Transfers. l. Section 1: Use of General Fund Resources for Capital Transfers. Subparagraph (a) states: "No member country may use the general resources of the Fund to cope with a large or continuous outflow of capital, and the Fund may request its member country to adopt control measures to prevent the The funds are intended for this purpose If, ​​after having been invited to this effect, the member country does not apply the relevant control measures, the Fund may declare it incapable of using the general resources of the Fund. "

The green light given by the IMF for the waste of their dollars is an interesting lesson for the sect of economists who adheres to the dogma of orthodoxy. The economic measures advocated by the Fund and the decisions it makes are fundamentally political, to the detriment of technical problems. In the case of Argentina, since it came to the rescue in the middle of last year, it has been exposed in all its dimensions. What has also been obvious is the dominant voice of the United States in this institution. Until a few years ago, this hegemony consisted of disguising oneself; today she has become cheeky.

As we know, the United States exercises the right of veto in this body, because they collect 16.74% of the voting rights, and the most relevant decisions must be taken with the approval of 85% of the votes . There is no transcendent decision without the approval of the United States. When the mask of technical neutrality falls, the face of the IMF appears as a relevant element in the ordering of the geopolitical issue of the United States. In those same days of the Fund's sharp turnaround following the Central Bank's overwhelming demand to be able to draw lots of dollars to deal with the currency exchange, the United States encouraged the coup. State in Venezuela. And it was the Macri government that was the first to support this intervention. This exchange is very transparent: dollars in exchange for the most absolute subordination to the geopolitical interests of the United States.

Latin America's relations with the IMF have evolved over the course of its history. Today, as never before, it is an integral part of the United States' political, economic and military strategy. The financial support provided to Macri is disproportionate since it is a government that has repeatedly demonstrated its inability to manage the economic environment, particularly the exchange rate issue. Trump's insistence on rescuing the macrist economy, with the desire to prevent the return of populism to power, may also be frustrated, just as it is happening for the moment with its interventionist harbadment in Venezuela. The mediocrity of the allies (Macri / Guaidó) does not help the United States to obtain results in these missions.

bullfight

The technobureaucracy of the Monetary Fund already has the excuse to justify another fiasco in the link with Argentina. In his predictable self-criticism, he will further specify that the United States has exerted political pressure to alter the main monetary and exchange rate policy of the agreement several times in less than a year. These changes were to save Macri again and again from the edge of the abyss. The IMF will wash its hands of another frustrating experience, but will not absolve it of the responsibility of the debacle.

As the dollar amount is limited, in a context of permanent exchange rate and closing of access to the voluntary credit market, the greenbacks of the Fund that will be used to support the exchange rate will be subtracted from those affected the cancellation of interest and principal. the debt. They may not be enough to deal with the dollarization trend in the months leading up to the election. With or without a CFK candidate, the dollar run will be specified because this behavior is common in this type of political forum. The deliberate confusion campaign led by the chief of staff, Marcos Peña, with his network of reporters and media repeating his book, is frightening, with a lack of control if the possibilities of populism return to Casa Rosada increase. What has happened on the foreign exchange market since April of last year without CFK playing on the electoral field? There was also a growing demand for dollars. This is nothing more than the debacle of the economy of the macrista, the trigger of the exchange rate.

The Central Bank has indicated that, if the demand for dollars increases sharply, official sales would be so strong that they would dry the peso pesos, thus preventing the acceleration of the race. This candid badysis fails to take into account the background of polling characteristics in the election month, and underestimates in particular the latent danger of dollar transfer of fixed terms in pesos and the acceleration of the circulation rate. of money (decline in demand for money). in times of financial panic.

By default

This year's financial program was quite tight, based on the closing of the amount of dollar renewals of treasury bills. Until last month, this plan could be developed in a comfortable way, but there were questions about the sustainability of the debt in 2020. These doubts triggered a country risk of more than 1,000 points, with a slight respite on the turbulent place. This would change over the last week, which would have allowed a 50 to 70 point retirement. The fear of a default or a scenario even more complex than that planned for the financial program next year is being consolidated. By diverting dollars to pay the debt on the foreign exchange market, for the electoral purpose of not triggering parity, the sensitive front of the debt weakens.

Despite the insistent campaign waged by the government's public and private propaganda networks to scare off a possible default of a third CFK mandate, the government of the Republic is demanding the cessation of payments or the restructuring of the payments of Interest and capital. Macri allied with the IMF. They are, in a desperate act for the loss of social membership to the PRO leader and the electoral brand Let's Change, who decided to use dollars intended to cancel the debt to finance the capital flight.

The green cover is short. If one tries to cover the demand of the foreign exchange market, the ability to pay the debt is discovered and vice versa. The government and the IMF have decided to protect bears in dollars in recent months and to neglect creditors of public securities. The scenario of a future default is then being prepared by the Macrist economy; not the possibility of returning to Casa Rosada from a government that the establishment describes as denigrating populist.

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