The Market's Changeable Mind

Just five days ago, Cristina was the bogeyman who was going to destroy the Argentine economy. Today, she soothes the savage beast of Wall Street.

From Bloomberg News today:

Argentine Peso Bonds Gain on Expectations Data Concerns to Ease
By Lester Pimentel

"The bonds are responding to the passing of elections and the positive tone in global markets,'' said Mariano Arrieta, an analyst at Puente Hnos Sociedad de Bolsa SA in Buenos Aires. "People expect that in the future, the consumer price index will begin to normalize.''

And last Friday:

Argentine Debt Devastated by Data Suspicion, Election
By Lester Pimentel

The widespread suspicion that the government of President Nestor Kirchner has manipulated inflation data and the likelihood that his wife Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will succeed him are transforming the Argentine bond market into a financial bloodbath.

Update: A financial writer friend of mine sent the following note and chart. While I do still hold that the market is neurotic and intrinsically contradictory (thus making rationalizing it journalistically on a day-to-day basis almost impossible, at least to do well), the writer does have a point about the apples-to-oranges issue.

I think it's a little misleading to put those two stories together on your blog. The one last week was a big picture look at argy bonds over the past year while the one today is a daily snapshot we do to just show what's going on the market at any given moment. But they aren't really comparable. I'm attaching a chart of the main inflation-linked peso bond's performance this year. It's a chart of prices, not yields, but still gives a pretty good picture of what's going on this year. The little tiny rise at the end is what happened in the daily story. But the starting point on the far left shows how far prices have fallen since Nestor starting fudging the numbers.

What I'm really glad about is that I don't have to write these damn stories anymore. They were the bane of my existence for a while.

Read more

Presidential Election Results 2007

Argentina's new president (AP)

Also, here's a election blog post I did for Pajamas Media.

Read more

The Headline Says It All

From Bloomberg News today:

Argentine Bonds Devastated by Rigged Government Data, Suspicion, Fernandez
The widespread suspicion that the government of President Nestor Kirchner has manipulated inflation data and the likelihood that his wife Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will succeed him are transforming the Argentine bond market into a financial bloodbath.

Read more

Cristina Mania and Self Promotion

With the world's sleepiest presidential race about to end this Sunday (assuming, that is, that CFdK wins), we'd like to point our incisive eyes to the most important aspects of this race: How would Charly García and Diego Maradona vote? And how do I see the race?

Luckily, these are very easy questions to answer. First, thanks to Drew B. for pointing me to this Clarín story, which lays out the political world views of Argentina's most famous footballer and rock star, respectively. Charly would not vote for a women because he's a man, he says. He doesn't even know if he'd vote for Evita. (Zoinks!) For his part, Maradona says he'll vote for Cristina because, we'll, there's really no other option.

And my view? Here's a story I did on today's episode of the BBC/PRI radio show The World.

Read more

La Vida Maradoniana

La Iglesia Maradoniana

After a quick note of apology for our utter sloth in updating the blog, let's move on to the news portion of our program. One could devote an entire blog to Maradona (obviously), so we pick our Maradona entries carefully. But two pieces of 'Maradonic' news that dropped in our inbox recently (and didn't concern El 10 getting plastic surgery in Bogotá) caught our eye.

First, related to the picture above, two Mexican couples will be getting married in the Maradona Church on October 29. Why did las parejas Mexicanas--Adrián Alejandro González Acosta (25) and Olivia Pozos Barcelata (22) on one side, and Mario Adolfo Martínez Cuellar (24) and Emma Natalia Trujillo Páez (22) on the other--choose that date? No, not because it's the day after Argentina's presidential elections. No, because that is Noche Buena in the Maradona church, the day before His cumpleaños. The following day begins year 47 D.D. (Después de Diego).

All hail his footiness.

In further Maradona Madness, Archivo 10--a site dedicated to His memory, is relaunching with a new design in time for His birthday. In case you wanted to know. In the words of the press release:

...es un sitio de coleccionismo sobre Diego Maradona, resultado de una titánica tarea llevada a cabo increíblemente por una sola persona, ajena al periodismo o medio alguno; Aníbal Di Toro (36), argentino, de la ciudad de Buenos Aires.

Se trata de una colección personal, que se exhibe para facilitar el intercambio con coleccionistas de todo el mundo, y así cumplir su objetivo de acopiar, archivar y preservar la mayor cantidad de material relacionado a Diego Armando Maradona.

Read more

Of tomatoes and pizza

According to Clarín, today begins a week-long tomato boycott, protesting their high prices. Last week, we noted the $15 per kilo price tag on our neighborhood tomatoes. Well, we neglected to mention the juicier story: That the price of tomatoes counted in the official inflation rate (from INDEC) is a mere $3.99 per kilo -- in accordance with the government's price cap on the red staples in Argentine cuisine. Of course, with suckers like me willing to pay $13 to $15 a kilo, stores are either refusing to stock any for the gov't decreed $3.99 or they are charging what they can get. Meanwhile, I'm happy to see both La Nación and Clarín are still mocking Kirchner's quote Friday that the INDEC inflation measure "está perfecto". Funny that.

In related news (sort of), we heard that a new pizzería is coming to the corner of Thames and Charcas. "Tonno" already has an outfit in Las Cañitas and it gets pretty good reviews. Workmen have been busy for a few weeks now fixing up the space of a dirty old parrilla that closed almost 2 years ago. Still looks weeks away from completion.... Why the post now? I guess pizza has been on my mind since I noted over at Gridskipper last week that there's a new 240-page book out on BA's pizza heritage. Note: this week, fugazza and faina might be the best order to avoid the rotten tomato situation.

Read more

Missing Roddy Scott on his birthday

It's the third birthday since we lost the inimitable Roddy Scott. Gone but not forgotten. At his gravestone in Princeton Cemetery, new seashells, coins and stones have appeared recently, brought by visitors (above, the photo of my mom watering the flowers as Henry looks on is from July 2007). Just this past week, family and friends formed Team Hot Rod (see photo below) for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's Walk for a Cure, raising money for diabetes research while remembering Rod. He would have said it was "a diamond of a day," as John Rose so aptly remembered.
[Aside to Rod's friends: Here I uploaded a very simple map of Princeton Cemetery and put a gray dot where Rod's gravestone is. I have no photoshop skills, as you can tell. Is this helpful at all?]

Read more

The vegetable crisis

Tomatoes have reached the eye-popping price of $15 per kilo! As such, they have become luxury items. The classic side salad of lettuce & tomato is now pricier than the main dish (meat) it was meant to accompany. Area parrillas are quietly dropping vegetables from their menus.... The great vegetable crisis is the talk of the town today, with Clarin devoting pages to the subject and TV crews now jumping on the story to interview vegetable vendors and consumers live on the streets. The cause? A tough winter is one explanation. Another is that soy farming is so lucrative--with a robust export market based on dollars (instead of pesos)--that the veggies for the domestic market aren't getting as much attention.

I just went to one of my favorite verdulerias--on the corner of Borges & Charcas--and confirmed the $15 per kilo price for tomatoes. A splurge: I bought three small plum tomatoes & then the strawberries for $10 a kilo seemed like a bargain--although I swear they were just $6 a kilo last week.

Read more