Weekly

Weekly Reports

Massa’s First Month in a Rocky Political Moment

First week
of September 2022
Sergio Massa completed his first month as "super-minister" of Finance with several achievements and some failures while many questions remain about the future. During this period, he managed to assert a greater political weight than his predecessors and to keep a certain independence with respect to Alberto Fernande...

More FX Controls Only Buy Time and Generate Costs

Fifth week
of August 2022
The Central Bank has been buying dollars in the foreign exchange market for 11 consecutive rounds. In any case, it is highly probable that the balance for August will be negative, after a negative July. When the CB sells, it sells a lot and when it buys, it buys little. Meanwhile, for more than 3 weeks, a mechanism ...

Slow burn

Third week
of August 2022
Last week Sergio Massa made his first important announcement for macroeconomic policy. Despite a striking lack of clarity, the first steps were taken to advance in the reduction of energy subsidies. As the new secretary herself pointed out, the savings in 2022 will be scarce since high inflation caused subsidies to ...

Massa’s Plan: Some Certainties and Many Doubts

First week
of August 2022
Last Wednesday, the new Finance Minister Sergio Massa was sworn in. His first presentation was coherent, well organized and touched on the relevant issues on the economic agenda. Logically, announcing is much easier than executing. In some topics we lack the details and in others, the measure itself is still missing...

Bewilderment

Fourth week
of July 2022
With actual exchange rates well above 300 pesos, markets are nervous and the general feeling is one of bewilderment. If one updates these dollar values for inflation, the informal rate is above the 3.50 in the 2001 crisis but is still below October 2020’s level. It is still a very worrying escalation. The government...

A New Monetary Scheme

First week
of July 2022
The worst of the peso debt crisis appears to be behind us, at least for now. The Central Bank, after an erratic start, put the shoulder to the wheel and by repurchasing public debt managed to stabilize the situation. Clearly this is not free. So far in June (with data up to the 27th) the Central Bank issued more tha...