FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Argentines’ Open Letter to Lagarde Blasts IMF Standby Deal as ‘Odious and Execrable’
July 18, 2018 (EIRNS)—A July 16 open letter to IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, signed by representatives of virtually every sector of Argentine society, denounces as “odious and execrable” the $50 billion standby loan the IMF signed with the Mauricio Macri government.
Lagarde will arrive in Buenos Aires this weekend to attend a meeting of the G20 finance ministers, but is reportedly worried about the “governability” effects of the vicious austerity that the standby agreement demands, even while insisting that no other option exists to “fix” the Argentine economy.
In the letter, legislators, and leaders of political parties, social, human rights, and trade union movements, religious groups, and others, warn that the IMF standby agreement is rejected by the entirety of Argentine society, who know what the IMF has done to the country in the past. It reminds Lagarde that the agreement violates the Constitutional mandate that the national Congress, not the Executive, is authorized to contract debt, and that the terms of the $50 billion loan clearly contradict “not only the desire for Argentina’s comprehensive human development,” but also the IMF’s own precepts. The agreement should have been submitted to Congress for a vote, the signers insist.
The Fund lies that Macri is the author of the economic austerity program now being imposed, but, the letter tells Lagarde,
“this will not relieve you and the IMF Board of your co-responsibility in misappropriating loan funds benefitting financier-speculative groups in the disastrous social consequences that this agreement will produce, especially for the most impoverished sectors.”
Conditionalities for new debt contracted are “odious and execrable,” the signers assert. Lagarde is instructed to inform the IMF Board of Directors that the agreement signed with Macri and his underlings “has no legal, political or social legitimacy,” and that funds provided will be used “in a clearly fraudulent manner to the detriment of the country,” and will also cause a “social catastrophe.”
