I have what may be thought a curious connection with Argentina -- the ice
machine -- and the news on this morning's radio that President Adolfo
Rodriguez Raa has resigned (together with the next-in-line) has prompted
some further thoughts.
When my house was built two centuries ago, a vault was cut into the
limestone cliff immediately behind my house to serve as an ice room in
which to store food. It is now my office from which I'm writing now. The
ice was imported from a freshwater lake near Boston, Massachusetts, but the
ice machine was invented in 1847 and imports were suddenly no longer
needed. An ice factory was built about a quarter of a mile from here and
ice-carts were dragged up the hill on an iron chain.
The ice machine, along with the invention of barbed wire, also meant that
an Argentina without too many basic resources became exceedingly prosperous
very quickly. Vast herds of cattle were coralled, new railroads were built
that brought the cattle from the pampas to meat-packing plants in Buenos
Aires and the chilled carcases shipped to the expanding populations of
Europe.
Between 1880 and 1910 the population of Buenos Aires alone expanded from
210,000 to 1.2 million and large numbers of immigrants from Italy Spain,
France and Germany poured in. Strangely, British immigrants didn't feature
much, although most of the vast railroad and factory investments that were
required by Argentina were from British banks. By about 1900, Argentina was
the fourth or fifth most prosperous country in the world.
Unlike England, Germany, the USA and other industrial countries where
prosperity arose mainly from a varied base of internal enterprise and
innovation, Argentina's growth was based on its meat industry (and grain)
alone and the ability of its small land-owning class to negotiate large
loans from European banks.
Thus, a culture of dependency arose in Argentina from the 19th century. The
land-owning debtors, without a banking/financial culture behind them, were
not always enthusiastic about paying their debts. On the other hand, the
British bankers lent too freely. A Royal Commission at the turn of the
century revealed that many bankers and money brokers couldn't even find
Argentia on a world map! So, with blame on both sides, Argentina has been
raising large loans, then defaulting, ever since the 19th century. In the
course of this century, spendthrift Presidents such as Peron continued the
culture of borrowing heavily in order to placate ordinary Argentinians,
particularly during the Great Depression and also WWII when exports slumped
because of either lack of demand or shipping losses due to warfare.
So that's the background to the present situation. The idea of introducing
a new "parallel" currency, the Argentino, was only devised in the hope that
ordinary people could continue to be given state benefits (in depreciating
Argentinos) while also protecting the value of the Peso/Dollar currency for
the sake of the rich and to pay back the defaulted loans (which will have
to be done before any more investments will be possible). Most countries
can't even manipulate one official currency. The idea of manipulating two
official currencies was, in my opinion, a nonsense from the start.
Now that Argentia is now in social, economic and legislative chaos, I
cannot imagine that the Argentino can possibly come about even though it
was supposed to be soundly based by being backed up by government-owned
wealth of land and buildings. But this backing would have been woefully
inadequate anyway. My guess is that Argentina will become very much like
Russia with a weak official currency, the Peso (in order to pay out state
benefits) and an important informal currency -- the US$ -- which will be
the medium for the grey economy. Or Argentina could dollarise completely.
Either way, it looks as though there's a dictator in the offing probably,
like Peron, backed up by the army and the police.
In the medium to longer term Argentina will have to develop its own
enterprise culture to replace the dependency culture (at all levels) with
which it is now unfortunately saddled.
I don't know whether Carmen Lopez, our Argentinian economist friend, is
still subscribing to FW. If she is, my advice to her is either to emigrate
(see below) or to sit tight and keep a low profile for the time being (see
below), and then, if and when things settle down, try to associate herself
professionally with a promising enterprise -- because that will be the only
positive way forward.
I have great sympathy for Carmen. I think I know what she is feeling. Some
15 years ago one of my friends was a young Argentinian poet who had to
leave his university and the country hurriedly because his friends were
being picked up by the death squads, becoming part of the thousands of the
"disappeared" intellectuals and political activists. He only managed to get
into this country because he married an English girl. Once again, Carmen,
please keep a low profile. Argentina might be moving into equally dangerous
times.
Keith Hudson
__________________________________________________________
�Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in
order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow
_________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
_________________________________________________
