Active memory 2001 (fourth part)

Relationship with the IMF

The restructuring of the debt depended on the attitude of the agency towards Argentina since, as recently in 2018, it was the only one that could lend it. On December 17, the IMF should disburse US $ 1,260 million (not 44,5500 million), and an additional US $ 3,422 million in the first quarter, plus US $ 250 million other agencies, for which by the end of November A mission was traveling to Buenos Aires that would evaluate not only the goals for the third quarter – which had been met – but also the prospect of a zero deficit for the next few months, something much more uncertain.

However, the crucial data was that in 2002 the IMF should lend a total of almost US $ 14,000 million between shielding, disbursements and refinancing, which were essential for Argentina to be able to give the certainty of meeting the capital maturities of 2002 and will not fall into default before the closure of the voluntary debt markets.

On November 5, the outflow of deposits from the private sector had been stopped (which in nine months reached a whopping US $ 13.3 billion, of which US $ 2.000 corresponded to the last week of October and the first week of November Meanwhile, it transpired that the Ministry of Economy planned to force a reduction in deposit rates through changes in financial regulations Any intervention in the financial system could accelerate the flight of deposits because depositors were in panic due to economic uncertainty.

The stock of credit to the private sector continued to fall to close to US $ 9,000 million from March 2 to November 5 (-14%) and, after the announcement of the debt swap, the closing of credit lines increased. credit from abroad, including commercial. The convertibility backing -which constituted the ratio between international reserves and monetary liabilities, including the BCRA’s active repos-, which at the beginning of November stood at 113.5%, fell to 105.5% on Monday 19 of the month.

When on August 21, the last agreement with the IMF that allowed to reinforce the reserves in US $ 4,000 in September reached 85%. It was well above the legal limit, but the BCRA had become the only provider of resources for the Treasury and for the banks that were running out of liquidity.

The stock of active repos, which was non-existent in March, stood at $ 2 billion at the beginning of November and at $ 3 billion when averaging November. Also, the triangulation of operations to assist the Treasury through loans to Banco Nación continued to weaken the reserve position, after a loss of US $ 7.3 billion in eight months, it already reached US $ 18.5 billion.

With the unemployment rate at 20%, arrears in salary payments in the provinces, prospects of non-payment of the Christmas bonus in the public sector and the possible elimination of the Teacher Incentive Fund, among other fiscal adjustment measures, a resurgence of conflicts was foreseeable .

The mood of De la Rúa’s leadership in decision-making was a serious handicap in the midst of the crisis. But so was the resistance of the UCR to “take over” as the ruling party, which conspired against governance. As usual, they did not know, did not want or could not (Alfonsín) achieve a political agreement that would try to guarantee institutional stability.

In understanding the crisis that meant the end of De la Rúa’s presidency, we have already been seeing the aspects of macroeconomic imbalance that determined the political crisis of governance, as well as the aspects of the crisis of political leadership that deepened the economic crisis. Without dismissing either of the two contributions, in this article we will now focus on the theory of technocracy and technocratic politics, which aims to explain the process of political collapse based on the rise of technocrats to decision-making in a context of absence of political power and social support.

The president and the technocrats were convinced that they faced an issue that required a response from the depoliticized technique, and by taking that path they only deepened the political weakness of a government that would end up losing its ability to implement public policies.

Therefore, it is important to analyze the dynamics of technocratization in the political crisis of 2001 in Argentina. Such dynamics had a strong impact on the final result, which was the collapse of the convertibility, the fall of a democratically elected government, and the default of the public debt.

Economic-financial dominance had been experienced in the previous decade, but this had occurred in a context of solid bases of political governance. And in 2001, exactly the opposite was happening: technocratization without political sustainability. Technocratization contributed to the governance crisis. Likewise, after the De la Rúa government, the technocrats fell into political discredit.

Later Peronist governments did not resort to the technocratic model, and politics became dominant again. This must be understood as a historical consequence of the serious crisis that our country faced at the dawn of the 21st century. Technocratic politicians, who carried out neoliberal reforms in several emerging countries in the 1980s and 1990s, have not had as much prominence since then.

The governments of the 21st century, in Argentina and elsewhere, were characterized by a primacy of politics. This can be interpreted based on the scars left by the 2001 crisis, considered one of the most serious in national history.

The government crisis that took place in 2001 was a process of technocratization. In the framework of a break in the government coalition, which had to do with breaches of commitments, asymmetries of power between the UCR and Frepaso and other difficulties in the relationship between the Alliance partners, the capacities to implement public policies diminished. and President De la Rúa, instead of reconstituting governance based on the parties, transferred power to technocratic ministers, in a context of weak legislative, party and popular support for his authority.

This option, instead of supporting his government, ended up eroding his relationship with the parties and his leadership, and led him inexorably to paralysis and the collapse of his presidency. In that sense, the crisis of Fernando De la Rúa was also a crisis of the technocratic model.

It will continue tomorrow.