sad to see a country that has everything needed to be a giant in Latin America again start an unnecessary economic collapse. With Argentina it's truly like watching a Latin version of "Groundhog Day".

It's important to their culture, no doubt, beef still being the centerpiece of Argentine dining generally; at 130 lbs per capita annually (which means many adults consume around 200 lbs), they're still the world's top beef consumers. Poultry, fish, mutton, and pork have made great inroads, but 55% of all meat consumed there is still beef - and what beef!

Contrary to provincial (or bigoted) notions though, Argentina's economy and exports today are quite diversified; beef in particular hasn't been a top export since the 1880s, when it was surpassed by wheat (then corn in the 1930s, and finally soy in the 1980s). And since 85% is consumed domestically, beef today is just 1.5% of Argentina's exports; they actually export more poultry and seafood.

Last edited Tue Mar 10, 2015, 12:01 AM - Edit history (1)

A sort of "this is just the beginning" thing for how the rest of Argentina's industries could head to with the incompetence and corruption of the Kirchner-Fernandez administration

And who's "Hernandez"?

Frankly, from you, Colgate, and Bacchus, I'd never expect a kind, or even understanding, word about the countries in the region which, like Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, and yes, Argentina, have been working hard to dig out from under two to three decades of laissez-faire induced financial and socioeconomic collapse.

The results have been impressive, considering where these countries' economies were around 2002. And none more so than in Argentina, whose economy has more than doubled, with almost 6 million net new jobs created, a 72% jump in real wages (even using private CPI estimates), record auto sales, near-record construction, and yes, record profits - all this while meeting around $190 billion in debt service payments. The other countries on the list have seen more or less similar improvements.

They've done this usually with little or no cooperation from Washington (on the contrary), or their own business elites despite the fact they've made record profits in most cases. And they did so pragmatically, without resorting to the extreme measures Venezuela has. But the U.S. lost a golden opportunity: instead of hitching its wagon to repressive, civil war-wracked cocaine republics like Colombia and Honduras - at a cost to taxpayers of at least $10 billion - Washington could have healed decades of ill will in the region by instead cooperating with these progressive, moderate governments.

Nobody expected vision like that from the likes of Dubya, but Obama certainly had that chance. Instead, he let the Miami exile extremists running the Western Hemisphere desk at the State Department continue to dictate Latin America policy - to the mutual detriment of us all.

Here's hoping that might change.

... aren't doing very good, especially Venezuela and Argentina. Why? It's simple, really, their leadership decided to go for populist reforms which, sure, helped out the poor more than ever before, but never really laid out a strong foundation to continue carrying out the programs and policies that would benefit the people. Things like the "misiones" worked for the Chavista leadership because they did genuinely help out the people. But at the same time, Chávez became more and more extremist and essentially implemented policies which drove out the more well-educated population, and it's still going. All those skilled PDVSA operators, and the many thousands of experienced managers and employees that used to work in many productive businesses and enterprises, were all driven out because they did not swear loyalty to the megalomaniac that Chávez became, and replaced them all with a bunch of untrained, unskilled, uneducated military personnel to run those businesses, to the point that the country right now doesn't produce jack shit, and depends on its oil exports for more than 90% of its income. Chávez created an environment were no business felt safe, because if he wanted, the next day he could say "That belongs to the people now" no matter how productive they were, and wouldn't give any kind of compensation to the original owners. This isn't how you create confidence for foreign entities to invest in your country, and all it does is just leave it even more economically isolated. Another mistake that they did was to trade oil for other products that Venezuela could've easily produced, especially many food products that they receive from many other LatAm nations. When you have an oil bonanza, the wisest thing you can do is actually sell it for hard currency.

Pretty much more than 70% of Venezuela's products now are imported, because instead of actually fomenting and diversifying production, Chávez decided to spend his oil bonanza on populist BS and turned almost every single State program into propaganda machinery. Now they can barely even build the many homes they set out to build for the many homeless in the country, and if they do build them, they are improvised and rushed structures that barely qualify as stable homes (something they certainly learned from the Chinese way of doing things.) I don't have anything against socialism. Hell, I think our world would be a wonderful place if every country tried to emulate the social democracies that the Scandinavian countries are. But unfortunately, the Chavista regime has turned into nothing more than a populist kleptocracy run by a bunch of would-be socialists, of which most have no formal education, and among them many military types, which are certainly not the kind of people to run a socialist nation.

The biggest mistake you and the I<3Hugo fan club did was still believe that the Chavista leadership were benevolent and had truly good intentions to help the people. But the reality is that those assholes have used their positions of power to enrich themselves like crazy (the recent HSBC leaks come to mind. Still no word on who all those thousands of clients are, and there's no motion whatsoever within Chavismo to investigate them, for a reason.) They've implemented economic policies that any person with half a brain and a decent level of knowledge in economics knows are only detrimental to a nation, such as the price controls and the multiple currency exchange rate controls that the government uses to designate dollars to those they deem necessary. If you cannot fathom the fact that this whole "socialist" idea that started out with Hugo has turned into nothing more than unchecked corruption, well, guess there's not much convincing you now after 16 years.

Argentine populism is more along the lines of what you see in Brazil, Chile, and a number of other countries in the region - i.e. strong social, regulatory, and incomes policies, but respecting the private sector and encouraging productive investment therein. Performance will vary from year to year, but in each of these countries since 2002 growth has been astounding.

Naturally, you can't please everyone. Obviously to those engaged in tax evasion, asset stripping, or money laundering, or to those used to exploiting labor, no amount of regulation is acceptable - just as to those who took part in the Dirty War 38 years ago, and their sympathizers, no trials or even criticism can be tolerated (Argentina is the first country in the world to systematically try human rights offenders, rather than just a few former dictators or the top military brass).

This explains most of the right-wing noise one hears from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, etc. (which, of course, the far right here in the U.S. picks up and repeats to their mostly ignorant, bigoted audiences who typically hate Latin Americans of any kind).

Unlike their counterparts in Venezuela, the business and landowning elites in these countries are making more money than ever; but for the fascists among them (and there are a lot, as you know), even mild reforms are unbearable to the ego. Obama has the same problem: right-wing business sectors and other extremists exalt Bush and bitch and race-bait non-stop about Obama despite his having turned this economy around - and Fox News will never let him forget it.

Trade agreeents and good relations with the U S. I don'T know where you've been not to see the positive comments made on those countries although some may definitely get lost thanks to our resident spammer. The only onesnwho think that the Cuba model is going to work in Ven and Arg are the dumbshit chavistas.