Argentina: Down The Tubes, Again

President Christina Fernández de Kirchner has turned up her left-wing rhetoric as the economy goes down the tubes. Indeed, GDP has contracted for the past two quarters; inflation is galloping at 56 percent, not the official 15.01 percent; and the country has defaulted on its debt, again. Never mind. The president claims Argentina's financial system is "one of the most solid in the world." She asserts that Argentina's woes can be laid squarely at the feet of foreign "vulture funds" and greedy capitalists who have speculated against the peso. Yes, the peso has lost 42.6 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar on the black market since the first of the year, and for very legitimate reasons.



But, for realists like me, a fact check is always worth a peso. Recently, Bloomberg's Charlie Devreux and Pablo Gonzales penned some most edifying reportage on one thing that's booming in Argentina: criminality. Bandits have put cargos of grain headed for the port of Rosario in their crosshairs. And why not, grain is traded in greenbacks, not pesos.



Property's worst enemy is theft: theft makes property insecure. And unless property is secure, it can't be accumulated and it is wasted. The increasing incidence of heists on grain, Argentina's most valuable export, indicates that property rights are becoming more insecure and that the economy only has one way to go: down the tubes.

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Steve H. Hanke is Professor of Applied Economics at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. He is also a Senior Fellow and Director of the Troubled Currencies Project at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. You can follow him on Twitter: @Steve_Hanke