“This is the toughest question I’ve ever been asked,” Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said, biting her lip and asking the moderator to repeat it.
John Coatsworth, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, asked again, “What are you going to do to ensure that Argentina makes the World Cup?”
It was a light end to a somewhat weighty World Leaders Forum event Monday afternoon in Low Library. Kirchner, the first female president of Argentina, is a controversial figure there, where her liberal social policies and regional political leadership have garnered praise even though she has been accused of political cronyism by opponents. Along with her husband Nestor, who preceded her as president, she has presided over a period of economic growth in Argentina since a financial collapse in 2001—experience which she tried to parlay into a model for global economic recovery in her hour-long address yesterday, delivered in Spanish.
Though she noted that Argentina’s economy is now growing at “near-Chinese rates,” Fernandez said that the 2001 collapse offered parallels to the United States today. Both, she said, were caused by inflationary bubbles and the anti-regulatory mood that dominated in the 1980s and 1990s.
In Argentina’s case, when the value of the peso plummeted after being pegged to the dollar for 10 years, there was a run on banks and rise in unemployment, causing social instability.
“Banks couldn’t return to investors the funds they had deposited,” Kirchner said. “This was no coincidence. It was the consequence of an economic model.”
The solution, according to Kirchner, is to find a new, more holistic paradigm. As an example, she noted that the American stimulus packages to offset the current crisis represent a marked break from the advice that the International Monetary Fund has given to developing nations over the past few decades.
The challenge is to find the right new model of today, rejecting all “gospel truths” and “quick fixes.”
“The members of schools and universities such as this one and those in think tanks, we should all devote our efforts to devising these new rules,” she said.
In the effort to redeem the global economy, Argentina might be able to offer some guidance given its recent economic success predicated on developing its domestic market and drawing foreign investment.
“If someone had told me when I was a student in La Plata that one day I’d be president and as president I’d give a loan to GM ... never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined,” Kirchner joked.
She only had time to take one question from the crowd, but it was a heated one, bringing to the fore the current debate within Argentina over a telecommunications law proposed by her government. The new regulation would put limits on the share of each media market that any one conglomerate could control. But critics have assailed the reform as an effort to limit political opposition in the media.
Kirchner answered the telecommunications question at length to a rapt crowd, but her best crowd reaction came when she touched on the soccer-crazy country’s World Cup woes.
The national team, coached by soccer legend Diego Maradona, is currently on the bubble in the South American qualifying tournament for the 2010 World Cup.
“From the bottom of our hearts, we’d like to qualify, but we’ll have to work very hard,” said Kirchner to loud applause. “So let’s all root for Argentina.”
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