CHARLES ROTH

“Argentina’s courts, in a welcome moment of sanity, have overruled attempts by Argentina’s government to prevent anyone who isn’t the government from publishing a figure for inflation that isn’t what the government says it is.”

That’s how a post from Quartz put the Monday ruling to overturn heavy fines that the government of President Cristina Kirchner had slapped on economists who published their own inflation data, which the government criticized as “inaccurate.”

Never mind that official inflation data was widely viewed as badly understating the real level of inflation. Even the International Monetary Fund has censured Argentina for dubious inflation and growth statistics, and set a Sept. 29 deadline to fix the “inaccuracy” of its data, or face sanctions.

Until then, Argentines will no doubt continue to operate assuming that annual real inflation by all private accounts is running around 25%, more than double the official rate.

The government’s statistics agency reported Wednesday that annual inflation  last month amounted to 10.5%.

That’s been ... Read More

BY PABLO GONZALEZ & KATIA PORZECANSKI

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner wants tax evaders hiding about $160 billion in dollars to help finance Argentina’s oil-producing ambitions. Her offer: Buy a 4 percent bond or face the prospect of jail time.

The tax authority announced the plan May 7, highlighting its information-sharing agreements with 40 nations and warning Argentines who don’t use the three-month amnesty window that they risk fines or arrest. Evaders have two options for their cash and the only one paying interest will be a dollar bond due in 2016 to finance YPF SA (YPF), the state oil company. The 4 percent rate is a third the average 13.85 yield on Argentine debt and less than the 4.6 percent in emerging markets.

A year after seizing YPF, Fernandez is funneling more money into the nation’s energy industry as the government struggles to boost production from the world’s third-biggest shale oil reserves. With Argentina already committed to pumping ... Read More

BY HILARY BURKE

BUENOS AIRES – When Argentina defaulted on its debt in 2002, the economy was collapsing and a bloody popular revolt had helped topple two presidents in a week. Now, the country could default again, but it would be over a matter of principle rather than necessity.

After a decade of sleepy litigation, investors got a jolt late last year when U.S. courts ruled in favor of “holdout” creditors who had rejected Argentine debt exchanges in 2005 and 2010 and sued to be repaid in full on their defaulted bonds.

A U.S. judge ordered Argentina to pay the holdouts the full $1.33 billion owed them the next time it serviced restructured debt. Argentina appealed, and a ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected in the coming weeks.

Investors are following the case closely because Argentina appears willing to enter into technical default in order to avoid paying the holdouts any ... Read More

China and Argentina have maintained frequent high-level exchanges, strengthened political mutual trust and advanced cooperation in many areas such as the economy, trade, investments since the establishment of diplomatic relations 41 years ago and more specifically since the establishment of the strategic partnership in 2004, said Li in a written statement.

“I am looking forward to exchanging views with Argentine leaders on bilateral relations and issues of common concern,” Li said, who also voiced confidence that, with concerted efforts, his visit would achieve the goal of closer friendship, mutual trust, expanding cooperation and promoting development.

The Chinese vice president is on a four-day visit to Argentina at the invitation of Amado Boudou, his Argentine counterpart and president of the Senate.

In Beijing the Foreign ministry underlined the significance of Vice-president Li Yuanchao’s visit to Argentina and Venezuela, the first to be conducted by one of China’s new leaders.

During the visit, Li will hold ... Read More

Some believe the Latin American socialism of the 21st century is heading for a dead end. Growing debt and trade deficits are putting pressure on regimes there – does this mean the end of an ideology?

Growing economic problems in Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia are putting pressure on Latin America’s left-populist governments. In the struggle for power, competition has broken out among socialism, Peronism and liberalism. But some believe all three are in decline.

The fight for “21st century socialism,” as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez put it, is particularly marked in the deceased statesman’s country. That Venezuelan opposition candidate Henrique Capriles has refused to recognize the victory of Chavez’ successor, Nicolás Maduro, who won disputed elections in April, is one sign.

Last week a fistfight broke out in Venezuelan parliament between Chavistas and the opposition. Meanwhile, Capriles is challenging the election results in Venezuela’s high court.

Ideological decline

Virgílio Arraes, a professor of contemporary history ... Read More

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and his Argentine counterpart and ally, Cristina Fernandez, announced new energy and food agreements Wednesday, then Maduro cheered supporters of Argentina’s president with a rousing speech at a soccer-stadium rally.

Maduro said their two countries are more closely aligned than ever despite the deaths of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and of Nestor Kirchner, Fernandez’s husband who preceded her in the presidency.

“Hugo Chavez Frias and Nestor Kirchner! I feel them hear, more alive than ever!” Maduro said to wide applause.

It was the high point of a regional trip meant to shore up support after Maduro narrowly won an election challenged as fraudulent by his opponent, Henrique Capriles. The disputed outcome and related violence have Venezuelans even more polarized, and Maduro is looking to shore up friends amid questions about the sustainability of the petrodollar diplomacy Chavez spread around the region.

Maduro met earlier with President ... Read More

Argentina’s government announced new measures on Tuesday intended to suck up undeclared dollars in response to growing pressure to abruptly devalue the nation’s currency.

Economy Minister Hernan Lorenzino said the new tax-free bonds and certificates of deposit will pull into the banking system the foreign currencies that Argentines have hidden under mattresses and spirited out to illegal tax havens.

Both measures are being sent to congress for approval, presumably because enabling people to declare cash without paying criminal penalties requires the force of law.

Argentines will need to deposit these undeclared dollars at the Central Bank, which will issue CDs for the entire amounts, Central Bank President Mercedes Marco del Pont said. The bonds will pay 4 percent interest through 2017, Lorenzino said.

The money will be used to finance energy and home construction projects, generating jobs and stimulating the economy.

Both sectors have stalled, in part because speculation about future inflation and a possible ... Read More

BY TAOS TURNER

BUENOS AIRES–Argentine President Cristina Kirchner vowed not to devalue the country’s currency for the remainder of her term because she said doing so would hurt most Argentines.

In a nationally televised speech, Mrs. Kirchner addressed widespread criticism of her economic policies and said that anyone who wants to see the currency devalued will have to wait until someone else becomes president.

“As long as I’m president, those who want to make money through devaluations, which other people have to pay for, will have to keep waiting for another government,” she said.

The comments came amid intense speculation that the government planned to announce some kind of new policy aimed at restoring confidence in the peso. In recent weeks, many Argentines have become increasingly desperate to ditch the peso and buy U.S. dollars. They are doing so to hedge against inflation, which economists say totals around 25% annually.

... Read More

BY RAUL LOTITTO

CARACAS – With the death of Hugo Chávez, Chávismo has lost its supremacy in Venezuela. It does not matter that so-called Chávistas still control Venezuela’s parliament, 17 of 23 provincial governments, and all key state institutions, including the judiciary. Nor does it matter that Chávez’s handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro, has already assumed the presidency. All of the signs point to the decline of Chávismo and to the end of Venezuela’s role as Latin America’s populist core.

Between last October’s presidential election and the one held last month, Chávismo lost almost 700,000 votes to Henrique Capriles’ Democratic Unity Roundtable – a shift that many, including Chávistas, attribute to “Maduro not being Chávez.” This was the first presidential election in Venezuela that resulted in an almost even split among voters (and the outcome itself remains hotly contested). If Venezuela continues along this path, Chávismo could not only lose its majority; it could collapse altogether.

... Read More

The recent capture of one of Italy’s top mafia bosses in the Colombian city of Medellín highlights the growing ties between Latin America’s drug cartels and Italy’s notorious crime families.

After a three-year manhunt, 39-year old Domenico Trimboli was arrested in Medellín’s upscale Laureles neighborhood, where he had purportedly lived for three years with his partner and two children. Born in Argentina, Trimboli was the head of the ‘Ndrangheta –Italy’s richest and most powerful criminal organization– and was one of Europe’s 20 most wanted criminals.

If convicted on drug trafficking charges, Trimboli faces up to 12 years in prison once extradited back to Italy.

The ‘Ndrangheta capo “had a lot of money and this facilitated his peaceful stay in Colombia,” said Nicola Gratteri, an Italian prosecutor in the Calabria region where the ‘Ndrangheta maintains its base of operations.

The ‘Nhdrangheta is an organized crime family similar to the Sicilian mafia and it is estimated that  it ... Read More

BY ROY GREENSLADE

The battle between the Argentine government and the media group Clarín grows more bitter, and bizarre, by the week.

In the latest twist, according to a court report, it was claimed that a minister, business secretary Guillermo Moreno, “violently” entered the group’s headquarters.

That incident followed an appeals court victory two weeks ago by the Clarín group over the enforcement of a media law that would have dismantled the company.

The court declared key of parts of the law to be unconstitutional, an embarrassing snub to the Argentinian president, Cristina Kirchner. Her government is to appeal that decision to the supreme court.

The appeal judges said the government had not given a “reasonable explanation” as to how curbing Clarín’s licences and market share would serve the public interest.

Kirchner has, says the Wall Street Journal, invested “an enormous amount of political capital into trying to undo Clarín, which she accuses of trying to ... Read More

China is seeking to deepen its ties with Argentina “with a more comprehensive and strategic vision”, Premier Li Keqiang told a visiting high-ranking Argentine official on Sunday.

Li made the remarks when meeting Julian Dominguez, president of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Argentine parliament, in Zhongnanhai, the headquarters of the central government in downtown Beijing.

China and Argentina are both important emerging economies and developing countries, and the two should develop bilateral relations “with a more comprehensive and strategic vision”, Li told Dominguez during the meeting.

He called on the two nations to push forward cooperation in trade and investment and seek joint development.

Li also briefed Dominguez on the economic situation in China, saying the Chinese dream of national revival will become a great opportunity for the world.

According to Chinese customs, bilateral trade reached $14.4 billion in 2012. China is Argentina’s second-largest trading partner, while Argentina is China’s sixth-largest ... Read More

By Roben Farzad

If you find yourself driving through the suddenly packed condo canyons of Miami—lamenting not having bought during the property crash—shake a fist or two at the Argentines. So many of them ponied up 80 percent cash down payments on units (mortgage market be damned) that South Florida’s condo depression rather abruptly turned into another boom. Their thinking was defensive: Swap iffy pesos for dollars and store that value in U.S. property, out of the prying hands of the government back home.

Now, with Buenos Aires finding some rather innovative ways to crack down on the flight to dollars, that spirit of capital preservation has morphed into a panic in Argentina to get out of the peso, the world’s worst-performing currency. In the black market for dollar-denominated bonds, Argentines are spending dearly to circumvent President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s expanded limits on foreign exchange, and inflation that’s privately estimated at 25 percent. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, the black market exchange rate is at 8.98 pesos per ... Read More

A video of the Venezuelan minister of penitentiaries at a Tuesday news conference in Caracas went viral within hours, and not because it is pleasant to watch. Rather it is proof that less than a week after being designated Hugo Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro is tightening the authoritarian grip of the 14-year-old military government.

Minister Iris Varela has decided that opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles is responsible for the post-election violence in the capital. Mr. Capriles “is the intellectual author and must pay,” Ms. Varela proclaimed. Speaking directly to the former candidate, she declared: “I am preparing for you a cell where you are going to have to go because you are a fascist and a murderer.” In prison “we will see if we can remove those fascist thoughts.”

Ms. Varela could speak with such confidence because Mr. Maduro controls the Venezuelan judiciary. If he decides he wants Mr. Capriles behind bars, the trial ... Read More

(Washington, DC) – The Argentine Congress should reject proposals by the Fernández de Kirchner administration to reform the justice system because they would undermine judicial independence, Human Rights Watch said today.

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner submitted to Congress on April 8, 2013, a series of legislative proposals to reform Argentina’s justice system. The package included a bill to limit individuals’ ability to request injunctions against government acts, and another to modify the composition and selection process for members of the Council of the Judiciary – a body charged with selecting judges and deciding whether to open proceedings for their removal. The Senate has approved both proposals, which are to be debated on April 24 in the Chamber of Deputies.

“This reform would give Argentina’s ruling party an automatic majority on the council that oversees the judiciary, which seriously compromises judicial independence,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Elections to ... Read More

BY MIMI WHITEFIELD

Most Latin American and Caribbean economies survived the Great Recession in relatively good shape. But now as the global slowdown threatens to hang on indefinitely, what is their fate?

The countries of the region will grow faster — at an estimated rate of 3.9 percent over the next five years — than the global economy. “Latin America will gain weight in the world economy,’’ said José Juan Ruiz, chief economist at the Inter-American Development Bank.

But that doesn’t mean Latin American and Caribbean economies will be impervious to sluggish global growth. Commodity prices are expected to fall, and investment is expected to decelerate.

Over the next five years, global growth may be 0.5 percent lower than it was during 2003-2007, the period just before the Great Recession, and that could trigger economic growth in the region that is nearly one full percentage point lower than it was in the five-year period ... Read More

For entire report , click here

Argentina

Argentina is a federal constitutional republic. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was reelected to the presidency in October 2011 in multiparty elections that media and various nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) described as generally free and fair. Security forces reported to civilian authorities but occasionally acted at lower levels independently of civilian control.

The principal human rights problems included reports of torture by provincial police, harsh prison conditions, and increased incidence of gender violence.

Other human rights problems included use of excessive force by police; occasional arbitrary arrest and detention; prolonged pretrial detention; actions that risk impairing freedom of the press; continued concerns about judicial efficiency and independence; official corruption; child abuse; sex trafficking and forced labor, primarily within the country; continuing discrimination against and infringements on the rights of indigenous people; and child labor.

Judicial authorities prosecuted a number of officials who committed abuses during the year; however, some officials ... Read More

The political turmoil in Venezuela that erupted in electing Hugo Chavez’s successor is causing emerging-market debt investors to flood into Argentina, chopping its relative cost of borrowing by the most in four years.

Yields on Argentine dollar-denominated notes fell as much as 2.56 percentage points relative to those for Venezuelan government debt this month, the biggest decline since May 2009. The extra 3.01 percentage points in interest that buyers demanded to own Argentine debt on April 16 was the least since January as speculation that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will default eases and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, handpicked by Chavez before his death in March, struggles to quell opposition calls for a manual recount.

Argentine bonds, which still yield the most in emerging markets at 13.84 percent, are gaining favor among fixed-income investors in developing nations after Maduro’s refusal to recount votes following a 1.8 percentage-point victory against Henrique Capriles on ... Read More

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Thousands marched in cities across Argentina Thursday to protest the government of President Cristina Fernandez, carrying signs saying “enough impunity” and demanding “independent justice.”

As with previous protests in September and November, many learned of the demonstrations on social networks, and banged pots and pans as they converged on city enters. In Argentina’s capital, the iconic obelisk and the Plaza de Mayo were crowded with people chanting “enough” after 10 years of rule by Fernandez and her late husband, President Nestor Kirchner.

But this time, opposition party leaders also joined in, turning what had been a non-partisan movement into something organized with an eye toward October’s congressional elections, which could determine whether she has the votes to change the constitution and do away with term limits, extending her power indefinitely. “I came to see if the Kirchners will leave and we can make a serious country. That they ... Read More

BY BRIAN WINTER & JORGE OTAOLA

BUENOS AIRES – An estimated 1 million Argentines marched on Thursday in one of the biggest anti-government protests in years, highlighting public anger over a deteriorating economy and President Cristina Fernandez’s efforts to reform the media and courts.

The demonstration in the capital, Buenos Aires, was peaceful and appeared to be composed primarily of the middle class. Many banged pots and pans in a traditional Latin American form of protest, while others carried signs with slogans such as “Argentina, wake up!” and “Corrupt Cristina.”

Several prominent opposition politicians joined the march, which was planned well in advance on social media. Two spokesmen for the Buenos Aires city government told Reuters the turnout in the capital was over 1 million.

Buenos Aires has long been a hotbed of opposition to Fernandez and her late husband, Nestor Kirchner, who between them have governed Argentina since 2003 – a decade marked mostly ... Read More