Tanzi y el FMI

Eduardo Borenstein hace una reseña del libro de Tanzi, Argentina: An Economic Chronicle.

Although the book is not technical, and does not contain charts or equations, Tanzi makes a serious attempt to explain the inexplicable secular economic decline of Argentina. One hundred years ago, he notes, Argentina's exports accounted for 7 percent of world exports, and its per capita GDP was higher than France's and twice as large as Italy's. The economic history of Argentina is a history of un-development. What caused this economic tragedy? Fiscal mismanagement, pure and simple, is Tanzi's answer. Since the Peronist regime started to create an overextended welfare state in the 1940s, the country became unable to balance the fiscal accounts ever again. This resulted in decades of persistent inflation, punctuated by devastating hyperinflation episodes, because the central bank was the ultimate source of finance for the fiscal disequilibrium. When, in 1991, Argentina adopted a currency regime that precluded central bank financing of the government deficit and effectively eliminated inflation, the fiscal imbalance resulted in an explosive accumulation of government debt, which ended in a notorious sovereign bond default by end-2001. This is where the book may prove especially controversial. Tanzi thinks that the IMF lending to Argentina during the 1990s was largely responsible for the debt accumulation that resulted in the financial crisis. Whatever one thinks of the IMF's advice to Argentina at the time, which in fact was much more nuanced than commonly thought, this does not change the fact that global private markets were anxious to lend almost unlimited amounts to Argentina at the time. Granted that markets charged a higher interest rate than the IMF, but would this detail have stopped the borrowing and spending?

Al margen de que uno ya ha escuchado este argumento (el del FMI) millones de veces, me pregunto, ¿no tiene algún paralelo con lo que está pasando? ¿No se están salvando los distintos gobiernos (algunas) instituciones que han sido irresponsables? ¿No estarán en problemas de nuevo en unos años por invertir de la misma manera que han hecho en los últimos cinco? ¿A quién echaremos la culpa ahora?