On a completely different topic:
Argentina is in meltdown and went back to the IMF to get help. The same IMF that fecked them over at the beginning of the 21th century. The same IMF, that promotes the wrong approach again. I don't know who is advising Macri, but they are the wrong people. I don't even know why they even keep their own shithouse currency. Just dollarize it and move on.
At the same time Cristina is dealing with heir own corruption scandle. Anyone who is interested might check-out "notebook-scandle" (cuadernos de las coimas). Its about a driver, who kept detailed notes of the bags of money he distributed to various people. Allegedly incl. Cristina herself. Hopefully someone makes a film out of it.
Soon there are elections in Brazil. Their economic situation gets less international coverage, because they are less exposed to investment held in foreign currencies, but they are in deep shit. Genuinely deep shit. While Argentina has a fiscal deficit of 5%, they have one over 9%. Its hard to overstate just how bad this is. At the same time they already have pretty high tax rates. European taxes with African services. A huge share of their expenditures is mandatory spending. The biggest two positions are pensions and debt service. Mandatory spending continues to outgrow taxes. They have very little room to maneuver. Brazil absolutely needs a pension reform, but that is a bit of a poisoned chalice and nobody seems to have the stomache to do it. I might add that the brazilian pension system is extremely regressive. A reform isn't just necessary to limit the expentitures, but to create a tiny bit of fairness. The whole thing could be resonably framed in terms of economic justice, but the sad irony is that the PT (workers party) is against any reform for political reasons. I had a soft spot for them but they have to take responsiblity for the whole mess that the country is in. Almost 10% GDP crunch, weak recovery, out of control budget. And even so there will be a new president, the congress will be filled with the same idiots, who paralysed the country. The candidates for the presidency are also hardly exciting. Anyone but Jair Bolsonaro has to be the motto, but nobody should expect anything from whoever wins it.