Argentine President Tells SPIEF, ‘Capitalism as We Know It Has To Be Revised’

June 4, 2021 (EIRNS)—In remarks that cry out for the establishment of a New Paradigm in global economic and strategic relations, Argentine President Alberto Fernández told his audience at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum today that “capitalism, as we’ve known it up until the time of the pandemic hasn’t produced good results” and has left only “injustice and inequality.” Therefore, he concluded, the “logic that has persisted for so long must necessarily be revised,” as the pandemic has made clear there is a real need for solidarity among nations, Página 12 reported him as saying. Fernández continued:

“If we’re going to build a different kind of capitalism, it has to be one that doesn’t leave out the concept of solidarity, because if this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that no one is saved alone and that there could be a moment in which the most powerful [nations] and the weakest ones tremble and are felled together by the virus.”

Speaking right after Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Argentine President asked his audience to reflect on what the strength of the world economy was prior to the pandemic. “The world was organized on a definitely weak basis—so weak that something as imperceptible as Covid-19 was able to not only ruin the lives and the health of millions of inhabitants but to [bring down] the world’s major economies.” Therefore, “we should think about what the global economy should look like in the period ahead, because it’s been demonstrated that what existed [before] had produced great inequality that favored the concentration of wealth in few hands but distributed poverty among millions.”

Fernández urged the international community to consider the “development potential” of middle-income nations like Argentina. During the pandemic, he declared, poverty and unemployment have increased, not only in the poorest countries but also in middle-income countries like Argentina—“countries always treated like developed nations but which are really poor countries.” It’s very difficult to develop “with astronomical debts, with huge [interest] rates, and a repayment timetable that definitely doesn’t favor the growth and social development of our communities,” he said.