Tigre was a party.
It was, at least, for 48 hours, from the moment Sergio Massa was sworn in and its leaders sang as if the Renovating Front had assumed the presidency until the new minister tried to appoint his number two in the Ministry of Economy. Massa told journalists accredited at the Palacio de Hacienda on Thursday night that he would reveal his name the next day. I was prepared until the tweet with the announcement. Luckily they didn’t publish it. When massism itself made it known on Friday morning that the chosen one was Gabriel Rubinstein, a cataract of appreciations by the economist went viral. The harshest, a sarcastic message that could have come from a troll’s head, but was posted from his Twitter account. In the tweet you see a photo of Cristina with a shovel, digging a welland accompanied by the following dialogue:
“Going into gardening, boss?”
—No, checking the balance.
For the horror to be perfect, the tweet climbed on the portals just four days after the prosecutors Diego Luciani and Sergio Mola began the argument in the oral trial for corruption in which they will request a harsh sentence for Cristina for illicit association for benefiting Lázaro Báez with multimillion-dollar contracts during his administration and that of Néstor Kirchner, and the same day that it was revealed that Máximo Kirchner controlled those projects. It is true that Alberto Fernández and Massa have said equally serious things, but Rubinstein does not contribute votes and his landing was so sudden that there was no time to prepare the ground. For now, it seems that no one had bothered to review their social networks.
The non-announcement of the economist became the nightmare of the weekend for the Casa Rosada and a yellow light for the profile of authority that Massa is trying to install, which seeks to differentiate itself from Martín Guzmán. He also does not want to say that the announcement will not take place, but he entered a waiting period and that alone was enough to foment rumors and the first feeling of uneasiness in the Palacio de Hacienda team.
Will the vice president consent? Efforts are underway to dissuade the bad mood that she generated in her most intimate circle. It remains to be seen whether the argument with which they try to persuade her is sufficient: that now it would be more costly not to name him than to swallow the toad of his criticism. Even the most recent ones, about “Cristina’s mental flaws” or Patricia Bullrich’s retweets of her.
Rubinstein, a low-profile man who enjoys prestige in the economic world for his successes in terms of inflation and growth forecasts, learned of the uproar in the United States. His countenance altered in a few minutes. He was receiving congratulations from friends and colleagues when they had to ask him from Buenos Aires to turn off his cell phone so as not to confirm or deny the information. He did it for several hours, but the situation became unbearable for him. He replied on Friday night with an enigmatic message that he copied and pasted into the WhatsApp of a few confidants. He said, verbatim: Hello! I’m away until Tuesday. Thanks. Cheers!
The Rubinstein novel could have been avoided if Marina Dal Poggetto had said yes for that position. The director of the Eco Go studio came out of the mess with a phrase that caused the massistas first indignation and then tenderness: “I don’t know how to sing the Peronist March”he told them, and closed the offer.
The delay in the appointment of Massa’s deputy exposes the difficulties of the driver of the economic portfolio to exercise his power, which do not begin or end with the figure of Rubinstein. The energetic area is central for the construction of that concentration that he intends to build and to feed the ostentation of the office of superminister from which he hopes to get on the electoral springboard next year.
Massa wanted to sweep the secretary of Energy, Darío Martínez, and his second, the undersecretary, Federico Basualdo, at the same time. He couldn’t and the problem grew in intensity when Martínez realized the play and told his collaborators that he was leaving. “I don’t want to find out on Twitter when they kick me out”, he trusted. It would not be a good letter of introduction for those who intend to govern Neuquén in the next turn.
Martínez himself leaked the resignation on Thursday night, while Massa’s entourage assured: “We have nothing confirmed.” Martínez will leave in the short term, but the names that began to sound for his replacement are not, what is said, of the Massista kidney. Federico Bernal, for example, who is the current head of the National Gas Regulatory Entity (Enargas) or Rosana Bertone, the former governor of Tierra del Fuego.
Cristina will not give up the management of energy, just as Alberto Fernández does not want to part with the leadership of the Central Bank, despite the fact that for Massa – Cristina supports him in this – Miguel Pesce’s cycle is disappointing. The Tigrense was promised a lot to take on. They gave him enough, but it might not be enough. It is not just an evil game of Cristina. Alberto, when he wants to, can also be harmful. Let Juan Manzur say it, if not.
The weight of the former president and the leaking of some names in the media had also conspired against the assembly of the massista team. They called Martín Redrado to find out if he was willing to return to the Central Bank, they tempted Miguel Peirano with a ministry, and they tried to seduce Roberto Lavagna with permanent advice that would put him in a prominent position. The three saw their names installed in the media, as if they had said yes, and took an immediate distance, the same as Emmanuel Alvarez Agis, Diego Bossio and Marco Lavagna, who assured that under no circumstances will he leave the leadership of Indec. Massa had to give, and is giving, a tough battle to complete his squad.
There were businessmen with whom he has a close relationship, or too close, who helped him. José Luis Manzano stood at the head of that operation. Daniel Marx, brand new adviser to the Committee for the Development of the Capital Market and Monitoring of Public Debt, could testify. Manzano called him to ask him to take over, although a source familiar with the negotiation confided that more than a request was an order. Marx is a man who irritates the toughest sector of the Front of All.
The great drama of the economy continues to be the lack of dollars. Fewer dollars equals more inflation and a widening of the exchange rate gap between the official dollar and the liquid dollar, which is the one used by companies to exchange Argentine pesos for dollars abroad, through the purchase and sale of shares or titles. of debt. It is all that and it is also a latent threat that the peso could be further devalued. Massa made a risky bet in his presentation: like Guzmán, he said that there will be no devaluation.
Sources with a lot of weight in the market and with access to the intimacy of the Central Bank estimate that, counting gold and special drawing rights, the Central Bank’s reserves do not reach 2 billion dollars. That is the capacity for maneuver that it has to intervene and avoid jumps in the rise of the official dollar, if it does not appeal – as the most alarmist intuit – to the reserves of the banks. The reserves represent 30% of private deposits – that is, of individuals and companies, not counting those of the public sector – that are deposited in banks and that the entities in turn must deposit in the Central.
Not counting gold and those special rights, reserves are negative by about five billion dollars. It’s the real panic number. It is no coincidence that Massa has spoken of increasing the amount of dollars with credits and benefits for exporters by 7 billion in the next sixty days.
Sixty days could be an eternity. The Central has sold US$924 million since Massa’s appointment. Only seven business days passed. Cristina is terrified and repeats: “I have been telling them and they continue to deny the import festival”as if it were not part of the same project.
The vice president clings to an old Kirchner teaching. The reserves of the Central Bank are, in the last or perhaps in the first instance, synonymous with the accumulation of power.
When they start to fade, power goes into dissolution phase and crash can become inevitable.