Argentina’s hour of truth

(Photo: Francisco Munoz – AP)

Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández still enjoys relatively high popularity rates thanks to an artificially inflated economy, but she may go down in history as one of Argentina’s most disastrous presidents ever.

Fernández, who will start her final weeks in office after Sunday’s presidential elections, has performed an economic miracle in reverse: Despite inheriting the country’s biggest economic bonanza in recent history, thanks to record prices for Argentina’s commodity exports, she will leave Argentina poorer than before.

There is no economist in the world who can dispute this: When she took office in 2007, Argentina’s economy was growing at 8 percent annually, and was one of the most rapidly growing economies in the world.

This year, Argentina’s economy is stagnant at 0.4 percent, and will contract by 0.7 percent in 2016, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates. Alongside Venezuela and Brazil, it’s Latin America’s worst performing economy.

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