MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
“President Macri is a normal person, has a normal head and common sense”
“The president we have now is normal, he has common sense and he wants to make the country normal and sooner than later, we'll be there; he has a normal world in his head”, said Carlos Melconian, head of Argentina's Bank of the Nation in reference to president Mauricio Macri, during a conference in Montevideo where he was invited to talk about “Argentina, the new rules of the game and their impact for Uruguay”, Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesActually, the whole country seemed to breath a collective sigh of relief after the election. It does get better every day.
Sep 12th, 2016 - 11:41 am - Link - Report abuse 0An interesting monologue of Carlos Melconian in this one-source-only story in which the head of the Banco Nacion attempts to soften the public opinion on the duration of the current recession.
Sep 12th, 2016 - 05:49 pm - Link - Report abuse 0It's remarkable how much time Melconian spent talking about the past government and how little he said about the present.
Not bad for this ideologue who, two days before Macri's election victory stated that Argentina needed to lower wages by 40 per cent, which he said required unemployment to reach 15 per cent. (Something the government is working on).
Not bad for the guy who, while working for the Central Bank in 1986, requested and obtained the end of an investigation about $6 billion borrowed by private corporations abroad during the 1970s dictatorship and later “nationalized.” Among these companies were some belonging to Franco Macri, father of the current president.
“President Macri is a normal person, has a normal head ,
Sep 12th, 2016 - 07:29 pm - Link - Report abuse 0What an odd thing to say,
are the argentine government hiding things from the argentine people,
and the rest of the world.
Is he human , is he an alien ,
Who knows, but he has a normal head, apparently,..lol
Anything is better than the previous Peronista regime 2003/2015 of the Kirchner family - a dire period of Argentine history.
Sep 12th, 2016 - 08:18 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Relative to Evita K, Macri being “normal” is very much a noticable distinction.
Sep 12th, 2016 - 10:57 pm - Link - Report abuse 0“Normal head” might refer to it not being full of Botox.
@2
Sep 12th, 2016 - 11:33 pm - Link - Report abuse 0There is another way to avoid reducing salaries that much, and that is by Argentine citizens themselves taking the initiative and getting educated, and well educated. Then you would not need a low salary, and if you can't find a job in ARG you have other opportunities.
Also having a stable currency that allows people to save, passing on wealth, is the other best way to create wealth long term. It also allows people to have capital to open up their own business.
But having a workforce that doesn't finish high school won't do it. Argentina has the worst education system in the Americas, yes worse than Haiti, and I have proof. In fact Argentine children read the fewest books per year of any nation outside sub-saharan African and few other enclaves, and at less than 1 book per year the fewest in the western hemisphere. Now it is claimed that this is offset by the fact Argentine children have a much higher percentage of internet and cell phone access than the other nations below it, and the “reading time” has been redirected to online sources, but somehow I don't see that as a cause for optimism. Most children are not me, who use the internet to find the truth of the world and dish it out to others as it is.
Bottom line is, in Argentina people always talk about salary numbers, without talking about WHAT SUSTAINS that salary number. Producing peach jelly is honorable and delicious work, but you can't expect to get for that job the same salary as someone designing a new laptop for ACER in Shenzhen, China. I mention them as an example of what happens within a generation or two of children working their sweat off to get educated.
The reason import-substitution works in Asia, was because during that time they worked on creating better value added products. In Argentina we close imports to allow the domestic production to rise, but then do NOTHING on improving the product. Employees just wan the salary, employers the production, and no one ever talks about product.
6
Sep 13th, 2016 - 01:15 am - Link - Report abuse 0Mr. Troll
Very well put.
@6 CapiTroll
Sep 13th, 2016 - 10:25 am - Link - Report abuse 0What's wrong with Argentina's education system and why do so many people drop out before finishing? Worse than Haiti sounds pretty dire!
@6
Sep 13th, 2016 - 01:56 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Has your account been hacked?
If not, well said. :-)
@8
Sep 13th, 2016 - 02:09 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Besides the rotten public education machinery, which is common in many countries anyway, the most important problem has nothing to do with government, but with the population: a complete erosion of the value of education. It is just not seen as something of importance in many sectors of society. The parents don't enforce it, so the children naturally don't care.
I have always been very critical of this aspect of Argentine society, I don't shy away from it.
The system itself is not worse than Haiti, but it is poor and combine a mediocre to poor education system with a society which a century ago was a model for valuing public education and now does not see it as a family value and you get what is a dire situation.
There are some bright sectors and parts of society in medicine, agronomy, advertising, and aerospace, but too many children just don't have the environment to push them, neither at school or at home, and thus languish. Then they ask themselves why their salary is so low later on...
What happened to TTT? @6 What have you done with him?
Sep 13th, 2016 - 02:18 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Taking a few points:
Books: I mentioned here many moons ago that often students could not source the books they needed for further education. I took books to Argentina for friends. And we had that debacle where books were held up at customs for fear Argentines would be poisoned by lead from the print. (Does anyone else remember that?) It was the CFK government excuse because they could afford to import them.
Education: If anyone has visited Argentine schools in BsAs you will know they are appallingly underfunded and is a terrible condition. I wouldn't put a dog in some of them. They have a three tier education system like most countries. Some state, some church and some fee-paying. I am talking about the state (not) funded schools. Add to that the teachers are for ever on strike and disrupting education. You can't blame them too much as CFK's government rarely paid them.
Further Education: This is a weird one and misleading because it has been used for years as a way of reducing the unemployment stats. With an enrolment over 300,000 at the University of BsAs how can they possibly all be attending University? They aren't - I can confirm this.
One of the most interesting threads about Argentina that I have seen on MP
Sep 13th, 2016 - 03:04 pm - Link - Report abuse 0@10 CapiNotATroll_right_now
Sep 13th, 2016 - 06:12 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Sounds sucky. Do you know why people have stopped valuing education? Do educated people actually do better in society and can children see them do so? I imagine if what they see is people getting jobs for supporting the right party or educated people doing crappy jobs it's not very motivating.
Also don't parents read to their children? You'd think they could get through more than one book a year.
Did you go to one of the state (un)funded schools? How bad are they really?
@11 ElaineB
Lead in book print? What was that all about? Sounds crazy.
Are the teachers being paid now by the Macri government? That would be one improvement at least.
And I always suspected Blair's plan to get as many students as possible into higher education was partly aimed at lowering the unemployment figures. Sounds like Argentina has taken it to a whole new level.
@11
Sep 14th, 2016 - 07:22 am - Link - Report abuse 0I am reminded of Jose Gaspar De Francia, first ruler of an independent Paraguay, who contrary to reports of sealing off the country, always allowed imports of books to be tariff free...
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