EDITORIAL For a few dollars less 21-01-2023 05:53 Sergio Massa looks no closer to gaining market confidence nor Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to advancing the impeachment of the Supreme Court beyond committee stage in Congress.
EDITORIAL Inclusive is also elusive 14-01-2023 06:49 The opinion polls in the immediate wake of last weekend’s invasion of the centres of all three branches of government in Brazil show a majority reject both the mob violence and its underlying denial of Lula’s election victory, but by underwhelming margins.
EDITORIAL Today is 2022… and tomorrow is 2023 31-12-2022 09:20 The year ending today has left most people feeling stuck in a rut, despite being anything but static. The only forecast that we can make with any certainty for the year now only hours away is that the 40th year since the return of democracy will come with general elections towards its end.
EDITORIAL Christmas this Sunday or last (or both)? 24-12-2022 06:45 The word “catharsis” has been overused in the past month because of its tempting overlap with the World Cup host country’s name but the shoe fits – there was an element of catharsis for a country still emerging from the coronavirus pandemic and enduring over a decade without any sustained growth since that 2010 bicentenary.
EDITORIAL You can only dream when there’s a team 17-12-2022 05:55 The Scaloneta’s smooth passage into tomorrow’s World Cup final in Qatar following last Tuesday’s semi-final has given a troubled nation an outburst of unanimous joy not seen in a long time. The key? Teamwork.
EDITORIAL Knocked for six 10-12-2022 04:58 If Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is the first serving Argentine vice-president to be sentenced for corruption, that is perhaps the less significant precedent set by Tuesday’s historic verdict in the Santa Cruz highway contract corruption trial.
EDITORIAL Hanging in the balance (of powers) 26-11-2022 01:52 Argentina has very concrete problems resulting from the seemingly abstract factor of legal security.
EDITORIAL Qatar – catharsis or the opposite? 18-11-2022 00:13 Argentina’s main risks currently lie in peso rather than dollar debt since obtaining rollovers from the IMF seems to be pushing at an open door. In contrast, peso bonds and the resulting quasi-fiscal deficit cannot be underestimated as prime causes of swelling the peso demand for the dollar.
EDITORIAL Storms amid a drought 12-11-2022 06:17 In the context of a lethal global cocktail being compounded by so many urgent socio-economic problems here, it seems incredibly absurd that judicial issues should continue to dominate the local political agenda.
EDITORIAL Sambas are not tangos 05-11-2022 06:22 Alberto Fernández raced to São Paulo to congratulate a victorious Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva yet no mirror of his own future awaited him in Brazil.
EDITORIAL Budget or judge it (or fudge it) 29-10-2022 06:00 It looks like Argentina will have next year the Budget which it never could in this – that is the main upside after long hours of parliamentary debate which have done nothing to redeem politics from its current disrepute.
EDITORIAL Stating the less than obvious 22-10-2022 06:20 Understanding a problem is the most important half of the solution.
EDITORIAL The discreet charm of inflation 14-10-2022 09:11 The vested interests benefitting from inflation in Argentina are extremely powerful and go a long way towards explaining its extraordinary persistence.
EDITORIAL Schools for scandal 08-10-2022 06:00 There are right and wrong ways of addressing both our critics and our supporters and of responding to crisis.
EDITORIAL As eleições mais grandes do mundo 30-09-2022 14:30 Brazil’s presidential election is already being widely billed in advance as a paradigm shift for the region but although it is hard to imagine a change of government not happening and not being for the better, a few caveats would be in order.
EDITORIAL Neither magic nor realism 23-09-2022 13:00 The theatre of the absurd would seem to have found a home in Argentina. Yet amid all this surrealism there are real problems awaiting real solutions and until these arrive, there seem no limits as to what will fill the vacuum.
EDITORIAL Magnicide versus magnification 17-09-2022 02:57 The failed attack on the vice-president should serve to place the grieta rift in a new light. Instead of being viewed as an unbridgeable gap between two political sides, the chasm should be seen as the millions who find no place in the two opposing coalitions or society as a whole.
OBITUARY Editorial Perfil co-founder Alberto Fontevecchia dies aged 93 15-09-2022 01:42 Alberto Guido Fontevecchia, who died last Saturday at the age of 93, was variously described in his obituaries as a man of action, a man of the world and a man of the street and all three things were true of the founder of Editorial Perfil.
EDITORIAL For a fistful of dollars 10-09-2022 02:00 The shock of the assassination attempt is quite rightly uppermost in public debate, but the real trends lie elsewhere.
EDITORIAL Violence never the solution 03-09-2022 11:24 What happened on Thursday night remains unimaginable but somehow it must be imagined and faced. A country whose capacity for shock has seemingly been tested to the limits is now tested yet further.
EDITORIAL The lady’s not for learning 01-09-2022 09:00 This city’s autonomy abruptly ceased being a constitutional abstraction this week when it was challenged amid the flurry of curveballs being hurled by Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
EDITORIAL Trial of the century or a century on trial? 26-08-2022 10:29 There was an air of climax about Diego Luciani’s conclusion of the case for the prosecution last Monday but in reality the trial has only just begun.
EDITORIAL Biting (or braving) the bullet 19-08-2022 13:24 The renunciation of populist utility bill freezes should be hailed. The Frente de Todos government is at least knocking on the door of the real world even if it has yet to make an entrance.
EDITORIAL Credibility gap the widest of all 13-08-2022 06:52 Massa is widely assumed to model his ambitions on Brazil’s Fernando Henrique Cardoso but even subordinating all else to that goal does not automatically make his policies more predictable.
EDITORIAL Blind eyes of a storm 01-08-2022 14:40 At least two natural phenomena – sandstorms taking the form of a vertical twister spiral and the eye of the storm, that island of calm in the midst of a hurricane or typhoon – unfold atypically in a relatively small area and perhaps Argentina today has something of both.
EDITORIAL Leaps in the dark 09-07-2022 06:00 Always subordinating economic policy to electoral strategy in classic populist style, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner seems convinced that a 2023 election irretrievably lost with Martín Guzmán’s IMF orientation can be turned around with an extreme transformation.
EDITORIAL Muddling and meddling in the middle of the year 02-07-2022 07:00 If 1974 saw the death of the founder of the Peronist movement 48 years ago yesterday, the current head is looking hardly more alive politically – and far more nominal in his authority.
EDITORIAL Is Colombia’s run-off Argentina’s run-up? 25-06-2022 00:01 We could do worse than take a closer look at Colombia and at last week’s presidential run-off in particular as the possible shape of things to come here.
EDITORIAL A motley crew – in the air and on the ground 18-06-2022 07:53 A Venezuelan cargo plane with mysterious Iranians is a random factor entering out of the blue for a government sinking ever deeper into the red, concealing as much as reflecting more substantial issues.
EDITORIAL Never a peak period for summits 09-06-2022 23:10 While it is rarely a good idea to draw conclusions on anything still in progress, the Ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles looked to have been strangled at birth.
EDITORIAL Where angels fear to tread 03-06-2022 11:19 President Alberto Fernández seems to be doing his best to inject some Hollywood drama into what should be regional routine.
EDITORIAL Back(s) to the future in the present (very) tense 28-05-2022 01:41 Instead of seeking any consensus to confront this impending national emergency, the political spectrum is increasingly fragmented at various levels.
EDITORIAL Could opium be the opium of the masses? 21-05-2022 06:00 In order to overcome the widespread perception that they are hopelessly abstract, institutions need to establish a connection with current problems and everyday life to become established again.
EDITORIAL April showers without May flowers 14-05-2022 00:01 Far from leaving his problems at home, while in Europe President Fernández took them on with a vigour almost never seen when staring him in the face at home.
EDITORIAL Are two heads always better than one? 07-05-2022 00:23 Blame lies not only with a self-destructive government whose two wings are more interested in flapping against each other than in taking flight but also with a distinct lack of clear, constructive and convincing alternatives from any other political sector.
EDITORIAL Coins in the air 30-04-2022 01:09 There was a time when virtually everybody except the economists defined the economy by its bottom line. Things are no longer so binary or linear – least of all when trying to size up the Argentine economy today.
EDITORIAL Divide and rule (but not rule of law) 23-04-2022 00:01 A separation of powers still nominally exists but all three branches of government now respond to partisan battle lines.
EDITORIAL Anything but a holy week 16-04-2022 00:01 Inflation at this level traps the government in the austerity it abhors since prices and government revenues both rising in real time leave wages and pensions trailing, thus turning the political debate into an uphill battle.
EDITORIAL Picky with the pickets 09-04-2022 00:01 Civic patience in Argentina is being increasingly strained by escalating social protests.
EDITORIAL Forty years after 02-04-2022 00:15 If the war beginning 40 years ago was a tragedy of human weaknesses masquerading as a show of force, the best thing we can do today is to highlight the positive side of being human.
EDITORIAL Remembering back to the future 25-03-2022 20:55 All the political jockeying, shows of force and crisis scenarios should not distract us from what Memory Day is all about.
EDITORIAL Warfare replacing lawfare 18-03-2022 21:37 Not only is a “war” against inflation a tasteless choice of words in the current global context but also offers little promise of success.
EDITORIAL A changing world, near and far 11-03-2022 14:37 Gabriel Boric’s inauguration takes Chile into uncharted territory, but the world as a whole may well be taking an even greater leap into the dark.
EDITORIAL Look back in anger 04-03-2022 21:13 The main reproach for Tuesday’s words to open Congress is not the almost 100 minutes of soft soap, clichés and wishful thinking – the reproach is rather that the softest soap was reserved for the situation in Ukraine.
EDITORIAL Steppes towards war 25-02-2022 22:48 With Russian tanks reportedly closing in on Kyiv, the international crisis is real enough and deserves to top Argentina’s generally parochial agenda.
EDITORIAL Children are the future 18-02-2022 22:22 Education is the key issue for Argentina, in any medium or long term.
EDITORIAL Of silk roads and sow’s ears 12-02-2022 09:51 The main lesson from the president’s Sino-Russian swing should be the need to separate international economic relations from domestic politics and even geopolitics in a multilateral world.
EDITORIAL Into More Frustration 04-02-2022 23:13 The distinction between an “agreement” and an “understanding” might seem like semantic quibbling but there is a world of difference. Máximo Kirchner and other critics within and beyond the government might be entitled to a certain scepticism as to the rosy picture painted by President Fernández a week ago.
EDITORIAL Slow boat to China… and everything else 28-01-2022 21:18 A slow boat to China or no boat at all? Given the presidential talent for procrastination on display with the IMF agreement, we will just have to wait and see.
EDITORIAL Into More Friction 21-01-2022 22:03 The government keeps looking for back doors to an agreement with the IMF, while the veep constantly writes oblique letters conditioning the president – why cannot the government stick to negotiating directly with the IMF while the president and vice-president simply speak to each other?