PRESS RELEASE
Sweeping Deregulation and 50% Megadevaluation in Argentina; Kirchnerite Opposition Mobilizes
Dec. 17, 2015 (EIRNS)—Argentine Finance Minister Alfonso Prat-Gay, a former employee of JP Morgan who held unregistered accounts in the British drug bank, HSBC, announced on Dec. 16 that he had eliminated virtually all the regulations and controls established by former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to defend the national economy and the population from financial predators.
Announcing the complete liberalizing of currency and exchange markets, freeing all restrictions on exports and imports and on the entry of speculative capital, and removing subsidized electricity and gas rates, Prat-Gay used the term "unification of the exchange markets" to describe what was in effect a mega-devaluation of close to 50%. Almost immediately, the peso plunged from 9.80 to the dollar to almost 15.
This is what City of London puppet, President Mauricio Macri, calls making Argentina "normal" again. And, there’s no doubt this complete reversal of former President Fernandez’s protectionist development policies will be felt elsewhere in South America, where other Presidents, particularly Brazil’s, are fighting to survive a London-Wall Street onslaught aimed at destroying the BRICS.
Former Finance Minister Axel Kicillof, now a federal congressman, called Macri’s measures "absolutely orthodox, coherent with what the International Monetary Fund always proposed," Página 12 reported. On Dec. 16, Kirchnerite congressmen issued a document attacking Macri’s economic plan, and denounced his use of decrees to name two new Supreme Court judges, completely bypassing the Constitutional requirement of Senate ratification. Deputies and Senators warned that if Macri didn’t backtrack on his Supreme Court nominations, which he subsequently did, they would consider initiating impeachment proceedings against him.
Today, 20,000 people gathered on short notice in front of the Congress to protest the economic measures and Macri’s unwarrented use of decrees to put through unpopular policies. Representatives of the Kirchnerite Victory Front, trade union groups, community organizations, state-sector workers and others delivered the message that they have no intention of accepting any rollback of the social and economic gains of the past 12 years.
