A new 'Puppet' President will be installed in his place, nothing will change, things will get worse. It's time for real government, by the people, for the people, not the bankers, not the corporations or the Global Cabal.

Essentially the current situation in Argentina has been caused by the huge debt that multi national corporations have created by lending huge amounts of money to a country who they know will not be able to pay up. Why? Because debt is highly profitable with banks and companies making 5,6 even 20 times the original sum back each year in interest payments alone.

Of course the corrupt neo fascist 'Peronist' party and most other major political parties have been complicit in this process which during economic boom times lines the pockets of politicians and wealthy Argentinian capitalists whilst ordinary Argentinians remain as poor as ever. Hardly any of the money lent or projects funded serve the needs of these people but instead amass profit for the tiny Argentinian ruling class. It is a myth to say that Argentina ever had a prosperous economy when the country was covered with shanty towns and full of destitute kids (and thats simply the extreme end of the poverty). As Noam Chomsky said a countries name usually refers to about 10% of that countries richest inhabitants, so when people say Argentina used to be prosperous what this means in reality is that the wealthy classes were doing well and as a result ordinary people had crap paid jobs, shit welfare provision and poverty rather than no jobs, no welfare and immense poverty. Not much respite for your Joe Bloggs.

Of course when things go wrong like corporate banks fear a recessession coming they demand higher repayments from Argentina eager to recover their cash quickly in case the Argentinian business classes/banks default.

So guess what happens? The Argentinian Governemnet (who like everywhere are dominated by the super rich and business classes or at best their middle class liberal apologists) nationalises and underwrites the banks debts. It can't pay these...not even the UK could. The IMF (International Monetary Fund) then agreed to help the Government with the debt by lending them more money but with slightly better rates but only on the basis that it carries out 'Structural Adjustment Programs'? Basically this means that ordinary people in Argentina have to pay back debt for which they never borrowed through imposed cuts in welfare (20% cuts in a country with poor provision anyway), mass redundancies because of forced economic rationalisation (unemployment has reached 20%) in a country with no unemployment benefit and finally are told they can only take out a fixed amount of their OWN MONEY out of cash tills and thier bank accounts (in order to protect the banks from going bankrupt..the same banks who got into debt in the first place!)

Well no one has any money (as opposed to very little money in good times) and no one has a job (instead of having a shit job) and the bankers and government are still loaded because they don't use Argentinian banks but place their cash in offshore trusts and US banks, yet they are the ones who were complict in creating the debt crisis with Western Multinationals and Mega Banks.

NOT VERY FAIR REALLY IS IT? SO I THINK THAT LOOTING IS ONLY A FAIR WAY OF WEALTH DISTRIBUTION AND TO MILLIONS THE ONLY WAY TO EAT!

WHAT CAN BE DONE..Well here's an idea. How about the ordinary Argentinians loot the gun shops and army barracks and police stations, government offices and banks and share out the resources democratically and boot the rich Argentinians who caused the debt out to their shitty offshore trust islands. How about they then set up a Government which is run on the basis of mass meetings of ordinary Argentines which distributes goods on the basis of need not the 10%'s greed. Hey and how about these ordinary Argentines tell the IMF and the Western banks to fuck right off and expropriate all their property in Argentina and use for the good of ordinary Argentines..and you never know it's such a good idea it might spread to other latin American countries too. It's happened before ; El Salvador, Nicuragua and Cuba; it can happen again!

Wouldn't it be nice if the IMF were so illogically and stubbornly unrelenting with repayment requests that the whole of Argentina decided they couldn't work with money at all anymore, went into the countryside, liberated some land, started forming communes, fed each other, started re-opening factories just to produce what they produce - not to make money - and the whole world saw how much better off they were and followed suit?

Ahhhhhh.

Let me dream.

Argentina's problems are not simply due to the IMF. In the early 1990s, Argentina was in severe problems with inflation of over 3,000 per cent. The government decided to fix the peso to the US dollar on a one-to-one parity, ie the peso was worth the same as the dollar. This helped to contain the economic turmoil caused by hyper-inflation by stabilising the value of the currency. Another anti-inflation stance was to reduce government dependency on domestic borrowing, which was crowding out private sector credit and causing businesses to raise prices to generate revenue.

By borrowing money from abroad, Argentina could allow more domestic businesses to borrow and invest and employ people. But Carlos Menem also used loans for corrupt purposes and spent money where it was not necessarily needed. So not only did increased foreign borrowing help stimulate the economy, it was also used to prop up the government.

The crunch came with the collapse of the Thai currency which set in motion a financial crisis in Asia and widespread depreciation. The domino effect forced Russia to default on its debt (it stopped paying money to those it was indebted to) and the massive decline in the value of the Brazilian currency, the 'real'.

With a third of Argentine exports destined for Brazil and the peso appreciating against the real, Argentine producers became uncompetitive since their goods cost so much more in Brazil. The collapse of the real coincided with the beginning of Argentina's economic slump. Argentine businesses began laying off workers and scaling down operations, while the peso remained over-valued.

The government had been unwilling to drop the fixed peso-dollar parity because it could mean yet more trouble for Argentine businesses that have borrowed US dollars. If the peso is devalued, the cost of debt in local currency would rise and hard-pressed businesses and individuals will be unable to pay back the loans. Yet a devaluation is necessary if Argentine exporters are to become competitive and begin a recovery. So, it's a catch-22 situation. Whatever the government does in terms of exchange rate policy, someone is going to lose out.

Meanwhile, the recession has made it increasingly hard for the government to pay debt, which is overwhelmingly in US dollars. Contrary to what was said above, the IMF is not entirely to blame. The IMF is just one creditor - most foreign debt owed by any country is in bilateral (ie with governments) and commercial credit (ie with banks). But the IMF stands at the top of the tree, in the sense that it is willing to give loans on the condition that a government implements stabilisation and structural adjustment measures - that is, to stop inflation, create a balanced budget, prevent insolvency in the banking system and move the country towards more 'sustainable' fiscal and monetary policies.

In Argentina's case, the efforts to balance the budget and subdue inflation has meant cutting back on expenditure on essentials and preventing people from withdrawing more than $250 per month from their bank accounts. It has had to make $2.5 billion in cuts to receive an IMF loan of $850 million. Without the support of the IMF, Argentina is fucked for it will be unable to access any other credit. Commercial banks and foreign governments will be unwilling to lend money to a government which does not implement policies that show it will pay the money back. After all, loans are not charity and nobody is obliged to lend to anyone.

A debt repayment default will mean serious problems for Argentina. It will not have the confidence of creditors, although confidence in Argentina is so low as to make no difference. But more importantly, it will drag the rest of South America down. By not repaying its debt to international financiers, Argentina is causing massive problems for poorer countries such as Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. In the event of an Argentine default, these countries will inevitably suffer from capital flight and lack of confidence and will experience high unemployment and mass starvation as a result. It will be even worse if Brazil, which is also in an economic crisis partly caused by electricity shortages, is also adversely affected by an Argentine debt default. It's all very well saying 'fuck off' to the IMF, but lives are at stake here. More people will die in South America as a result of the Argentine debt crisis than the World Trade Centre attacks.