Talk:December 2001 riots in Argentina

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[edit] Acephaly Act?

I haven't been able to find any information related to the "Acephaly Act" that was noted in this article under the sub-section "The Rodríguez Saá Administration." Could the poster please cite where he/she obtained this information or link the actual text of the Act. Thank you so much! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.110.18.43 (talk) 17:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC).

I've come to realize that "Acephaly" is not actually the name of the act as implied by the capitalization of the term. Does anyone know the real name of the law? Does it even exist? If so, it really needs to be linked or cited...please.


This article needs better localisation.

Its not clear what country these riots took place, or in what year. Also the ousted presidents full name, and if possible a link to a page on him. (I presume the year is 2001, but that is guesswork only) It still needs further editing, the English is still rather twisted.

I guess that Fernando de la Rúa is the ousted president and the country concerned is Argentina and the finance minister is Domingo Cavallo

The original author is obviously personally familiar with the events. The rest of us need a bit more help to understand the events, and put them into context. I'd suggest replacing

       "be the freezing of bank deposits by the economy minister Domingo"

with "be the freezing of bank deposit accounts by the economy minister Domingo"

       "stop deposit leaking from the banks."

with "stem the currency drain on the banks."

        "The leaking of deposits took place all through 2001"

with "The currency drain took place all through 2001"


 "in the bank titled in U.S. dollars." is my best translation of the original phrase.

I think this is intended to indicate that the sums on account were denominated in U.S. dollars, ie the sums on account were presented as values in U.S. dollers, and convertable to local currency on withdrawl at the then ruling exchange rate? If this is the correct interpretation, then the text could use some additional explanation to this effect. Or were accounts payable in real folding US dollers? or something else?


Can somebody with more familiarity with recent South American history confirm the correctness of my inferences from this article, and I'll tidy it up further.

Shoka

[edit] spot on!

It is Argentina, here are some external articles by Alan Woods on the events of December 2001:



I have re-written the article in a more chronological order and have improved the general quality. It still needs someone with specialist knowledge of the subject to give it a complete overhaul, especially on the subject of the freezing of deposits as I don't know if what I have written is correct as it was hard to work out from the original article. It could also do with being renamed. --Ebz 14:31, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Some order

It'd be extremely helpful if everybody signed their posts using four tildes ~~~~.

Anonymous User:201.235.2.228 has been adding important content and doing some refactoring — I suggest that you register with a username, so that you have a Talk page for discussion and important messages, and since it's customary for users who make such extensive edits.

It's usually recommended that you don't do partial edits, leaving sections "to be completed". Better write a very short summary as free text (not a bullet lists of items). You can also write offline comfortably in a text editor, and then paste the whole thing into the article so as to have a complete structure all at once. After that, if the article seems long and complex (which it should), we can file a request for comment, so users outside the main developers can come here and check if they understand everything.

Shoka wrote:

I think this is intended to indicate that the sums on account were denominated in U.S. dollars, ie the sums on account were presented as values in U.S. dollers, and convertable to local currency on withdrawl at the then ruling exchange rate? If this is the correct interpretation, then the text could use some additional explanation to this effect. Or were accounts payable in real folding US dollers? or something else?

There were peso-denominated accounts and dollar-denominated accounts. If you had pesos, however, you could ask for them to be converted to dollars at the 1:1 rate (plus a small bank fee, as usual). The only advantage of an account in pesos was a higher interest rate. In theory, you could pay anything in dollars instead of pesos, though actual dollar bills were not in wide circulation. The problem began when people took their dollars away from the banks and "sequestered" them in safes or sent them abroad (the Central Bank had no means to get more dollars and thus the theoretical convertibility was in jeopardy, and the country was already indebted in dollars and could not bring more in).

We should be careful not to repeat everything already explained in Argentine economic crisis.

--Pablo D. Flores 22:11, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] It's done

I have finished filling out the subsections; something came up while I was writing them yesterday and I had no time to complete them.

Thanks for the advice on editing.

--Sjms, formerly known as 201.235.2.228

[edit] Claims

The changed that Tobias made to this (in bold)...

the 1-to-1 rate, while instrumental to overcome the chronic hyperinflation bursts of the late 1980s it is claimed by some people to have made Argentine exports uncompetitive.

... poses a small problem. I admit I wrote that line myself and then didn't revise it as much as I should. The fact is, exports grew at first, then should have grown more given that international prices of commodities were high, then stalled, and then sank when Brazil devalued the real; convertibility played a part. Some analysists say one thing, other say another; in general, orthodox neoliberal economists defend convertibility and heterodox progressive economists portray it as the root of all evil. The real problem is verifiability.

"Claimed by some people" is a "weasel phrase". Passive voice and indefinite qualifiers are not a good idea; we need sources. I'm going to look for them (INDEC is a good place if you like dig those things up). I think Argentine economic crisis would need that too. --Pablo D. Flores 18:52, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

I think its obvious that the over-valuation of the Peso hurt the Argentine exportations. I don't see any POV there. I would remove the over-NPOVing phrase of Tobias. -Mariano 07:11, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Some analysts (I don't have the source here, but I read the thing yesterday somewhere) think the peso was not overvalued, and that the problem was the lack of a responsible economic plan. I went to the INDEC and found that exports more than doubled (121% increase) between 1991 (the beginning of convertibility) and 1997 (just before the recession hit). Fuel and energy exports increased 329%; industrial manufactures 179%. Agricultural and primary products performed worse, but still increased over 70%. Why? Certainly not because of convertibility, but the cheap dollar and stable economy allowed industries to get money at low interest, invest, and get many of their supplies and machines from abroad. The problem was the trade balance, because imports increased a lot more (267%) and except in 1995-1996 the trade balance account was in the red. Those were dollars going away forever.
I would rather not say that exports were harmed by the low exchange rate. The connection is not as direct. Of course, with a higher exchange rate exports would have been much more profitable in local terms, so exports increased less than most think they would've with a higher exchange rate. But that's too hypothetical. Also, selling more and getting more profit, but in devalued pesos, wouldn't have been as good. The exports that did best, remember, were those of fuel and energy... from companies bought up by foreign investors, or by Argentine corporations which kept their funds dollarized and abroad. That was the problem of convertibility in a historically unstable country like Argentina: it was practically built to encourage capital flight. Get your pesos here, turn them quickly into dollars, and store them elsewhere.
Just my two (devalued) centavos. --Pablo D. Flores 10:52, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Revert again?

Tobias, did you even read what I wrote just above? Saying that something "is claimed by some people" is no good. Better not having it at all than having it like that, because all sorts of disputable things are "claimed by some people".

Exports were comparatively high-priced; that may have been uncompetitive (I'll try to look up sources for that). But imports were definitely encouraged by the low exchange rate.

The best years of convertibility, export-wise, were 1998 and 2001 (about $26.5 billion each). In 2002, after the convertibility collapsed, exports decreased a bit, and then in 2003 they increased 15%, well over the previous records — this while the country was cut off from all external funding or investment, and with a terrible unemployment rate. This year the estimate is, I think, over $34 billion, while the GDP is only now reaching pre-crisis levels, foreign investment is still low and unemployment over 12%. It's quite obvious that the high exchange rate alone is responsible for much of this surge.

My personal POV, which I don't want to incorporate into the page, is that convertibility encouraged conspicuous, irresponsible, First-Worldly consumption in a country that did not want to be reminded of its place well inside the Third World. We in Argentina have paid dearly for this, and although I don't intend to get my personal opinion stated as fact, neither do I want to treat the matter lightly. --Pablo D. Flores 15:28, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

On second thought, I've placed a note about this at Argentine economic crisis, which seems like a more appropriate place to discuss this matter. Maybe the above discussion should be moved/copied there. Again, in that article the claim that exports were made uncompetitive by the exchange rate was written by me in the first place. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. --Pablo D. Flores 15:43, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, I made a change again. See here and here; the latter is a PDF file, where I found this summary (I translate):

"During the 1990s Argentina made deep structural changes... As a result more than 90 billion dollars of direct foreign investment contributed with the generation of annual growth rates around 4%. Since 1998 Argentine economy suffered... the fall of commodity prices after the Asian crisis, devaluation of the euro and the real, and higher interest rates over the sovereign debt. ... it is very easy easy to manage a convertibility-like currency board with an influx of foreign capitals, but very difficult to do the same [when capital flow] leaves [the country]."

--Pablo D. Flores


[edit] article conclusion ?

Perhaps a small resume (or link to another article) of what happened next , would be a better end for this article. Jor70 13:25, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Excelente articulo

Lo lei de principio a fin, uno de os articulos mejor redactados del tema. Esto realmente me trae recuerdos de lo que fueron esos años. --Fixman 21:36, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

Suggest this article's current name ("December 2001 Argentina riots") amended to "December 2001 riots in Argentina" as this avoids using "Argentina" as an adjectival (i.e. it's less awkward-sounding English). Sardanaphalus (talk) 22:21, 17 May 2008 (UTC)