As Argentine Peso Falters, President Keeps a Low Profile
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
People used to give US politics flack for having clear cut left and right parties.
But the Argentine party system has typically been liberals (UCR and allies) vs. nationalists (Peronists and allies), with each having left and right factions, but also factions based on personalities, and on support/opposition to whatever the most recent dictatorship happened to be.
So, if you met an Argentine and find out only that he is a member of, say, the UCR that gives you as about as useful information as finding out someone was a Democrat in 1955, when that might have meant anything from a John Birch society segregationist to a left social democrat.
That's a big opportunity for corruption, in both the Argentine and historic US cases.
Things have gotten a little more 'normal' since the Kirchers have been so polarizing and the old parties have broken down some. But it's still in my opinion a source of great inefficiency not to have a well-established left-right party system.
People should have the right to vote for whatever they value, and should have the right for that vote to count (via representation of those values). A two-party system suppresses those rights. It's 'efficient' if you happen to agree with one of the two parties - but, it is not fit for purpose if you think the point of democracy is to represent the people in political decision-making.
A political system which implies that there are only two valid points of view (or one valid axis) is the poorer for it.
To take it to the extreme, consider Switzerland, where the largest party has only 26.6% of the votes. 11 parties are represented in the parliament, and the executive power is shared equally among 7 ministers representing 4 different parties. The system offers an unusual continuity in the executive branch:
The Swiss executive is one of the most stable governments worldwide. Since 1848, it has never been renewed entirely at the same time, providing a long-term continuity. From 1959 to 2003 the Federal Council was composed of a coalition of all major parties in the same ratio: 2 each from the Free Democratic Party, Social Democratic Party and Christian Democratic People's Party and 1 from the Swiss People's Party. Changes in the council occur typically only if one of the members resigns (merely four incumbent members were voted out of the office in over 150 years); this member is almost always replaced by someone from the same party (and often also from the same linguistic group).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Switzerland#Executi...
For example, if neither party has a strong interest, certain government departments can act without proper accountability to the public.
Clearly the US has been a successful country, but there are several problems with using the US as an ideal model: the benefits of this success are not necessarily distributed in the best way. And, with the US's huge resources, it's not obvious that the choice of political system is the biggest factor in its success.
Within the same party you can have representatives who are both for and against nearly every important issue! In the UK they need to form a coalition (sometimes) to run the government, but when they have that coalition, pretty much the only things which get voted on are those which are guaranteed to pass. Or if you want real crazy, go look at 2003~2007 Israel, where coalitions would need to be formed from several radically different parties.
I don't see any evidence that requisite inclusion of diverse stakeholders lead to better outcomes for the public.
Oh! I absolutely don't think that.
The two parties in a two-party system (US; UK normally) are often poorly distinguished, straddling two sides of a dividing line but essentially at the same point. This is even worse for the franchise as voters don't have a real choice at all: just the illusion of one.
But, if you are going to have a two-ish party system, left-right is IMHO a more efficient way to organize it than personalities, culture clash and historical grievances - especially if you then also have left and right as factions within the historical parties. Which is how the US and Argentina organized their parties until very recently, Ireland still does. I think that's a bad system and creates too many opportunities for arbitrage and corruption.
Plus, multiparty systems tend to work on a left-right spectrum anyway.
In winner takes all elections, a two party system will form. Because aspirants want to form the smallest winning coalition (ideally 50% + 1 vote).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law
Just peeked at wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Argentina
The executive is elected thru runoffs, requiring +45% of the vote to win. That's better than "winner takes all", but still a pretty high bar for new parties.
The legislative is elected thru a (mostly) proportional representation, by their provinces of origin. That's pretty good. The barriers to entry for new parties are comparatively lower (e.g. vs the USA).
I'm not a polysci prof, so I can't say if a separate executive & legislative or a parliamentary system is better. I've seen it argued between stability and adaptability.
And I know nothing about Argentina's campaign and election laws, so can't comment on its fairness, or barriers to entry for new parties.
Argentine here. That's just not true, at all.
First, "Peronism" is not a party. "Peronism" is the product of the deep personalism of argentine politics. It's movement very much like a political Christianity: "he tougth us The Way and we must interpret his words". It's like if people in the US that love Ronald Regan started calling his thinking something like "Reganism".
As you pointed out, Republican and Democrats changed their general views over time. The same happens here. The difference is that the Justicialist party (the main "Peronist" party) almost always wins.
Traditionally, the analog to the current Democrat/Republican dynamic was the Justicialist/Radical Civic Union (or "UCR"). The first one was more for economic regulation and general welfare, while the second was less about welfare and more about economic freedom. But the UCR hadn't been relevant for almost 20 years now. In the '90s the Justicialist party took a "economic liberal" turn, a strange one in retrospect, but one that most Justicialists supported because "privatization of public services and more economic freedom, for some specific people, CAN be better for the welfare of the people". How can a left-wing party get away with that? they had power. They already had the left-wing peronists masses, and they could get the votes of the middle-class, who mainly voted for the UCR, with some economically liberal policies. The left/right dynamic was destroyed because one party got to powerful.
That ended badly, with horrible preformance by a heavly subsidized private sector, the inability to compete with foreign products destroyed hole industries, the massive firings created more and more poverty and slums, and a monetary policy that tried to maintain the Argentine peso equivalent to the US dollar without actually creating enough growth to sustain it. Things were starting to smell around '99, so the Justicialist party lost the presidential election against an alliance spear-headed by the UCR. But then everything went south in 2001. We had one of the worst economic crisis in our history, the goverment authorized the banks to not give any money back to the people, which created a massive outcry from the middle-class. After that any reasonable person would ask "And why the fuck would anybody vote for the Justicialist Party ever again?", and that's when Faith comes in. Faith, and the lack of options (after all, the crisis exploded during the UCR-and-friends's watch). People still believed that "Peronism" was the true path, so the Justicialist Party reinvent themselves.
A small faction within the party rose to power with a "go back to the roots" narrative. And they did, they won the 2003 presidential election under the name "Front for Victory", registered as a "new party". The failure of the "Neoliberal model", the model their own party had apply, gave them the perfect traumatized population to apply a left-wing, demagoge, and nationalist narrative. And because we like our personalization in our politics, we call it "Kirchnerism", for the faction's leader Nestor Kirchner (president of the country for two terms). He died in 2010. The current president, Cristina Kirchner, was his wife...
And that's it. We had classical rigth/wing dynamic until the left-wing party got so powerful that could do whatever they wanted, and failing miserably trying to keep everybody happy. They gave sinking ship to the traditionally right-wing party, and when shit hit the fan they lose their last chance to prove the people they were capable, dooming them for ever. Then, the left-wing party went trougth a rebranding process and started ruling again, without any real oponents, with all the political power. Just now we have some contenders for The New Rigth Wing Party (UCR is pretty much dead now), but only time will tell.
Oh, and of course now we have a new generation of kid rised in the '00s inside the goverment-funded propaganda machine, kids that wear T-Shirts that say "With Cristina, Without Doubts"... yeah.
Politics is dysfunctional here. "Socialism" is the default, and the best way to get votes here: welfare programs (that never work) gets you the votes of the poor and the intellectual elite, while a big and wasteful government is the #1 client of the private sector in a weak economy. It's triple win. Then, when the economy fails (because of taxation, evading investment, unprepared workforce) they can always blame on "the man", "USA", "neoliberalism", whatever... And another term begins.
Argentina went downhill because they've been in this process longer. Ignoring the pathological cases (Venezuela, Bolivia), if the other countries here like Uruguay or Brazil don't rev up, we'll have another Argentina 5-10 years down the line. This year the Brazilian government was caught masquerading economic indicators for 2013 to keep inflation inside the goal.
I can understand the fact they cant understand it very well because of the lack of a cultural perspective to do it right.. (and the people they represent) What i dont understand is people from inside, reverberating that sort of speech.. making clear you dont know very well what are you talking about.. or which class you are defending with this speech.. (and its probably not yourself, unless you are part of the top 1%)
But its very simple to measure how bad we are.. Take a look at your own economical condition, to see if you did not improve it with time..
Anyway, the point is, the economy down there has been turbulent like this for a verrrry long time.. Makes smart people throw their hands in the air and say eff it, pass me a malbec :)
That's considered the main issue in all latin americans countries, to a more or lesser extent: endemic corruption and poverty that perpetuates the vicious circle of charismatic demagoges that, most of the time, have a short-term goals.
The corruption exists because the institutions are weak, so because there are no well-developed systems to "get things done" the people that do it are the ones that go ouside "the system" (and the law). Making "things happen", either feeding the poor or running companies, imply bribes, leveraging personal relations and participating in a "favour" economy. It's all to navigate the broken argentine institutions (and, of course, the people at the top of the political food chain are the best players in the "corruption" game).
A better one, out of many options: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/world/americas/as-argentin...
Another: http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21595471-latin-americ...
[1] http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/03/21/bitcoin-value-hits-7...
EDIT: surprised that someone downvoted this comment.
Basically Argentinians love dollars and we are not rational. Also bitcoin fluctuations and the difficulty to buy and sell bitcoins with a local bank account makes the innitiative very limited.
Even if that's true (there are ways, though) that doesn't somehow negate the idea that it would be better for the normal person on the street to be able to use a currency that -- while volatile -- retains its value better than the peso.
The idea isn't that the US Government will step in there and say "Here's some bitcoins use these instead" but rather that the people will decide to end up using them on their own, irrespective of policy.
Argentinians love dollars because compared to the peso they're a "safe" store of value that's not under the control of their government, and because so many people will accept them. Dollars are the de-facto secondary currency not because of policy but because of people. There's nothing that would prevent the people from deciding to use bitcoin or dogecoin or litecoin or argecoin if they so decided in the future.
[1] http://mises.ca/posts/blog/murdoch-tweets-about-money-printi...
At the end I can bet you $ 5000 that the bitcoin will be marginal in Argentina in the next 5 years. Do you accept?
Yes. It's not gonna happen. What currency to turn your money into is irrelevant if you have the money. There have been alternatives to the official currency for millenia.
Not to mention when it's a matter of life and death to have access to that money, the slowness of Bitcoin exchange, as well as the volatility of the currency, are not benefits at all. What happens when it drops 20% or 80%, as could very well happen? It's neither established enough nor stable enough to give any guarantees. Better turn to the us dollar or other options.
Here's how easy it is, even from TFA:
>[Argentina] is the only place we know where you get better banking services out on the sidewalk than in the bank. Every time we go we take a big wad of green pieces of paper with Ben Franklin's picture on them. Driving directly to the town square in Salta (close to the family ranch), we then simply stop the truck and beckon over one of the many black-market moneychangers standing in front of the bank.
P.S As for the "Cyprus savings confiscations in 2013 provoking a previously unseen rally on bitcoin", that didn't happen by Cypriots. The kind of people who buy gold (light survavivalists) decided to ramp up on it -- still an insignificant amount, not even to the global economy but even to Cyprus' economy.
The points that you overlook are: [1] The USD is currently being deflated like never before and could potentially collapse without warning. Thus making it increasingly unattractive to hold over long periods. [2] Argentina's online economy has recently suffered a huge blow with taxes for online purchases outside of the country. BTC is already becoming the international 'money of the internet'. [3] Most importantly, Bitcoin volatility has been decreasing over time as the price & adoption increases. This is something that shouldn't be overlooked as it has huge implications for the pricing of goods and services in BTC. [4] Finally, there are many ways to do fast transactions in BTC. Have you ever tried sending BTC from one android wallet to another? It comes through instantly. Granted that larger BTC transfers would still require more confirmations though. Off-blockchain transaction services could also kickoff soon. [1] http://mises.ca/posts/blog/murdoch-tweets-about-money-printi... [2] http://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265195791/argentina-imposes-he... [3] http://elidourado.com/blog/bitcoin-volatility/ [4] http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/11602/how-does-bi...
That cannot happen. The USD is tied to the Yuan to the Euro to the Yen and all. If it goes, everything goes.
In case that happens, and we're talking about a situation that could trigger something like WW III, BTC will be perhaps the least safe place. One of the first concerns of big governments would be to squash those alternate currencies, and BTC just has some bits and bytes, they have the police, SWAT teams, and international agreements.
>Finally, there are many ways to do fast transactions in BTC. Have you ever tried sending BTC from one android wallet to another? It comes through instantly.
Yes, but I was talking more about the transaction to convert your BTC to "some currency I can actually use for my actual buying needs".
(That you can use BTC with a "list of vendors that accept it" doesn't count. I don't want to buy novelty items from fringe vendors experimenting with alternative methods of payment. I want to buy a house from the realtor I want, I want to buy food from McDonalds down the corner, I want to pay my utility bill, etc...).
Old link:
http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/argentina-is-going-down/201...
I must say I'm uncomfortable with the idea that an post can change title and URL to a different domain after comments have been posted.
Britain fought a war to free Argentina from Fascist dictatorship (and, err, get our islands back), they had a chance for a clean slate then, and they blew it.
Your parentheses make me hope your main statement is sarcastic. For the record, the dictatorship was already declining in popularity when it decided to take a bold gamble against the British Empire. Sadly, human nature shows that victory would have granted the regime additional years, if not decades, in power.
So there you go, as long as you 'win' a war it's beneficial to your election chances. We're all tribal underneath!
Yeah, but the first part of that sentence, "In the end", is the key. Delaying the collapse gives the current office holders time to finish out their terms and it gives people with money time to move it offshore.
To understand the dynamic in a primitive economic sense, imagine that you can either farm and produce an excess of food to store away, or you can learn a specialized skill. In one scenario, you were too optimistic, and there will turn out to be no demand for your specialized skill. In another one, you can sell your excess food to other people in return for their skilled services. (Or maybe you're the one selling your services) And in yet another scenario, everyone has tried to save up wealth in the form of food, and extra food ends up being relatively worthless relative to other goods and services they need to buy for a high quality of life.
When there is poor confidence about the future of the economy, people will tend to save rather than invest in the future. While, on an individual level it makes sense to store up safe assets, for an entire economy pessimism and poor sentiment can be self-fulfilling. Furthermore, those stores of wealth whether grain, currency or diamonds only maintain value as long as people are confident that they can be traded for other goods and services they need—something that becomes an increasing challenge when those goods and services simply aren't being produced in sufficient quantity.
So, while you can't lie your way out of problematic fundamentals, underinvestment due to uncertainty is also an impediment that must be overcome, regardless of whether it is created by gloom about the prospects for the economy as a whole, or fear that markets will collapse, or fear of political upheaval where your potential gains will be confiscated.
The devaluation, denial of inflation and expenditure of reserves paint a bad picture: they dont intend to change the direction of the ship, at least not yet.
Of all the issues the US has with the political system, i wished we had the strong institutional presence they have. Politics in argentina are so cultist, and they always centralize power in a persona or figure. There's never a discourse that says "we are going to do this, so in the future this wont be corrupted, or this will be measured independently" etc. I havent heard that in my entire life.
To explain the basic consequence of that to a typical american: there is no future planning in argentina. There is no forecast that ever spans more than 2 years, and those ones venture in black magic. Everything has to be about immediate effects because nothing is built for the long term.
They want litecoins too
"Hey! Look at that thing happening over there in the distance, far away from here!"