Yikes, Argentine Economy!

Here's one of my translations of a story in today's Clarin. Yikes. Not looking good. I'll be interested in following this once home. I hope things don't get as bad as it sounds here!

Prat Gay and Redrado responded to Cristina and Warned her about the Economy

The deputy of the Civic Coalition said that the questions from the head of state ‘were a great praise’ and alerted that the country entered ‘a recession with very high inflation.’ Redrato assured that ‘the conversation that the President said didn’t exist” and added: “There isn’t a feeling of discouragement: the economy is worse and the people are worse.” The ex-heads of the Central Bank Martin Redrado and Alfonso Prat Gay ended up responding to President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner this morning, who yesterday harshly criticized them in the setting of an opening ceremony in which she also complained about the banks and the ‘sentiment of discouragement” of which she accused media of communication of being a part.

In her speech, the head of state referred specifically to Redrado: she confirmed that they chatted about the external commerce of 2009 and said that the President of the Central Bank foresaw a surplus that ended up actually being double what he thought. “The conversation that Cristina said happened doesn’t exist,” the economist asserted today, who accused Cristina of having ‘a penchant for distorting reality” and “a bad memory or bad faith”.

In a dialogue with Radio 10 and Mitre, Redrado said that foresight that the President attributed to him was in reality that of the Relevant Expectations of the Market (REM) that the Central Bank made with the opinions of many analysts, centers of investigation and universities. “She is referring to a survey among 50 economic institutions and confusing it with my personal positions. My role as president of the Central Bank never was to make projections nor was it to generate public politics like what we took in 2008 and 2009,” added Redrado.

Prat Gay, for his part, said in a conversation with La Red (the Network) that the criticism that the President made ‘are a great praise.” When I ended my term at the Central Bank, (Nestor was president then), Kirchner offered me another term, but I told her no, because I saw the transformation of the economy coming, the deputy of the civic coalition said.

“I don’t believe that the President has a personal problem with me,” he added before questioning: “It bothers me that she spends her time on me when there are other things to do. Yesterday she denied the existence of these problems, the inflation, the recession, that the INDEC recognizes.” “We have entered into a recession, the inflation is very high and this combination is lethal,” he added.

About the actual situation, Redrado was also critical: “There is not a feeling of discouragement: the economy is worse and the people are worse off, they consume less, prices are increasing, there is less employment, the reality doesn’t reflect well on the president, that she doesn’t see economic measures as necessary and she is a short of solutions to face this crisis.”