MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

A plea for Mr. Cavallo

Seventy five world personalities figure in an open request to the Argentine government published in the New York Times, asking for an immediate consideration of Mr. Domingo Cavallo's legal situation and ensure that he is “treated in a fair and impartial way”.

Mr. Cavallo is an outstanding economist who was the architect of the stabilization program that helped, under the president Carlos Menem administration, defeat hyperinflation in 1991 and set the foundations for ten years of financial and exchange rate stability in Argentina.

However Mr. Cavallo held the same job under former president Fernando De la Rúa who was forced out of office by street protests and rioting last December unable to revert recession, unemployment and a general impoverishment of the population.

Actually Mr. Cavallo implemented the freezing of bank assets to avoid a run on the banks, that sent a furious middle class to the streets demanding a return of their savings and deposits. A decision that remains unresolved and is an ever mounting head ache for the current president Duhalde administration.

Among the distinguished personalities who signed the initiative of Professor Laurence Kotlikoff from the Boston University Economics Department are five Nobel Prize winners, Robert Lucas, Franco Modigliani, Robert Mundell, Paul Samuelson and Robert Solo; Paul Vockler former head of the US Federal Reserve; former Italian Foreign Secretary Susana Agnelli whose family owns Fiat company; former US Ambassador in Argentina James Cheek; current Peruvian head of cabinet Roberto Danino; Santiago Edwards former head of World Bank economists; Jeffrey Sachs, etc.

Mr. Cavallo after completing his studies in Córdoba attended Harvard University and is a respected member of the international Economics academia. However the former Minister also has political aspirations but his sometimes mercurial character becomes a liability.

In his second attempt to pull Argentina out of recession, 2001, and regain international trust for the country, Mr. Cavallo, contrary to Mr. Menem's time, did not have sufficient political support to implement his policies and was finally forced to resign because of internal infighting in the ruling coalition and provincial governors resistance to comply with austerity measures.

Mr. Cavallo is currently jailed waiting trial for having signed several decrees regarding the freezing of bank assets and the exchange of sovereign bonds.

Mr. Cavallo supporters in Argentina feel he's a political detainee and a scapegoat for the current financial crisis.