> In short,
> the Peronists saw the presidency was theirs for the taking. Few parties
> in history have ever turned that down for the sake of the nation. And in
> this case it's not even obvious that coalition government would have been
> better.
Don't think this gets it, Michael. In fact, Castro was totally correct a few weeks ago when he said that they will have a hard time finding a loco willing to be the next President of Argentina. The fellow who has the job now made clear immediately that he didn't intend to be President for more than 48 hours. Menem, a neoliberal cockroach under something like indictment for corruption, was quite ready to do a deal with De la Rua but no-one would have paid any attention. A "coalition for the sake of the nation" speech on TV would have had the same effect as De la Rua's state-of-siege speech - a giant mob descending on the coalition ready to tear it limb from limb. The Justicialists in Congress and the provincial governors were not ready to follow Cavallo to the pit filled with boilingshit he's in now. A decisive moment was about two yesterday afternoon when the two union groupings jointly announced an openended general strike until the state-of-siege was lifted. Menem and all the hounds of hell would by then have made no difference.
Doug's posting of the World Bank summary of Argentina stories gets the tone exactly of the establishment press...totally vacant. No-one (except of course Castro, who spelled it out a couple of weeks ago) dares say it - the whole neoliberal thing has crashed and burned. Convertability, budgetary restraint, free flows of capital domestically and across borders, privatized compulsory pension funds to replace state retirement programs, currency boards, deregulation, privatization and "free markets". Smashed to pieces, and the US graduate economics department trained creators of this monster fleeing for their lives while the entire nation screams ESAD. It's glorious.
john mage