Argentina and Austerity

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The question of who has benefitted the most from these government policies is crystal clear. As the New York Times recently noted, Macri’s policies favor influential landowners and members of the urban middle- and upper class who have access to US dollars. His policies also mean a drastic pay cut for the working class.

Argentina’s New Order

Newly elected Argentine president Mauricio Macri has inaugurated harsh austerity measures and quashed dissent.
by Adam Fabry ~ 3/24/16

It’s been four months since multi-millionaire businessman Mauricio Macri took office as president of Argentina, narrowly defeating Daniel Scioli — the uninspiring candidate of the Peronist ruling party Frente para la Victoria — in last November’s elections.

The win was a coup for the unapologetically pro-market, but ideologically neoconservative Cambiemos coalition, ending a twelve-year stretch of Peronist leadership. Since he was sworn in last December, Macri has wasted little time rolling back the populist policies of the Kirchner era.

In his inaugural speech Macri offered a potpourri of promises: ending the confrontational politics of his populist predecessor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner; creating an independent judiciary; fighting corruption and drug trafficking; maintaining welfare programs; and eliminating poverty.

However, since then, Macri has moved swiftly to reconfigure the Argentinean economy along explicitly neoliberal lines — to the joy of domestic capitalists and international corporations alike. To do so he has relied on an unprecedented number of “emergency decrees” (similar to executive orders in the US) to bypass Congress — where the Frente para la Victoria has a majority in both houses ...

Much more here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/03/argentina-macri-kirchner-cambiemos/

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