IT HAS been a summer of discontent in Argentina. In December police forces in 20 of the country’s 24 districts went on strike in protest at low salaries, sparking the worst bout of looting since the crisis of 2001. A heatwave then knocked out the power in Buenos Aires during the holiday season, leaving tens of thousands without electricity for more than a fortnight. A combination of political torpor and economic fragility has once again raised questions about the precariousness of the country’s position.A few months ago things looked rosier. After brain surgery had forced her to rest for six weeks, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner returned to work in November with aplomb. First she purged her cabinet of some of its more ineffectual ministers. Next she nodded through a $5 billion offer to compensate Spain’s Repsol for the nationalisation of YPF, an oil firm, in 2012. Ms Fernández even abandoned the widow’s weeds she had worn since her husband Nestor’s death in 2010.But clothes are easier to shed than Argentina’s grievances, exemplified by striking police. Although police salaries are not meagre, they are devoured by inflation, which private economists...
via The Economist: The Americas http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21593420-government-struggling-stay-its-feet-holding-ring?fsrc=rss|ame
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