Naomi Klein in Argentina

[Bradford DeLong]

>'IMF Go To Hell'
>The people of Argentina have tried the<BR>
>IMF approach; now they want it their way
>NAOMI KLEIN
>
>...What does the IMF, in town to set conditions for releasing $9-billion in
>promised funds, have to do with the fate of these people? Well, here in
>a country where half the population now lives below the poverty line,
>it's hard to find a single sector of society whose fate does not somehow
>hinge on the decisions made by the international lender.
>
>Librarians, teachers and other public sector workers, who have been
>getting paid in hastily-printed provincial currencies (sort of
>government IOUs), won't get paid at all if the provinces agree to IMF
>demands to stop printing this money. And if deeper cuts are made to the
>public sector, as the IMF also is insisting, unemployed workers who
>account for between 20 and 30 per cent of the population, will have even
>less protection from the homelessness and hunger that has led tens of
>thousands to storm supermarkets demanding food...

If you have eight different provinces each printing money that 
circulates throughout the country, each province will print a hell of 
a lot of money--the real resources to pay the librarians, teachers, 
and other public sector workers come from reducing the value of money 
balances in the hands of the rest of Argentina's citizens, and so 
printing money is a way for each province to fund its spending by 
taxing others' citizens.

Seems to me that what Naomi Klein is calling for is an immediate 
hyperinflation in Argentina. Does she know it?

Brad DeLong