Yesterday in what looks like Parque Las Heras

Yesterday the heat index in Capital Federal reached 37ºC with 426% humidity. A true sweat box. As you can see from the above photo from Clarín, the Argentine summer pastimes of tanning/smoking/mate are very much alive and well.

Are these tickets worth anything?

About 90 minutes ago Clarín reported that the Buenos Aires city government had denied a permit to the electronica music festival Creamfields for its November 7 show because the show's sponsors hadn't fulfilled the city's requirements. The city also ordered the company that was selling tickets to stop immediately because they'd been selling tickets for an unlicensed show. That's sad enough news for all the fans who'd planned to go, but more importantly, what will the city's ecstasy dealers do?! Pobrecitos. For their sake if for nothing else, one can only hope Mayor Macri and the Creamers work something out.

[Foto: Pablo Bigatti @ Flickr]

Lothar Matthäus and wife Kristina Liliana

For those of you who don't follow Argentine soccer gossip with the weird obsessiveness I do, a quick rundown on local club Racing's recent travails.

1. Racing sucks this year.
2. In fact, it sucks so bad it hasn't won a game this season (and we're 11 games in)
3. Indeed, Racing sucks so much that the team--one of the "5 Bigs" who are the heart of Argentine fútbol--may be relegated to the second league next year. (This would please fans of Independiente, Racing's archrival, and opponents of ex-President Néstor Kirchner, a huge Racing fan, to no end.)
4. In a Hail Mary of sorts, the team tries to hire German Soccer legend Lothar Matthäus to take over as coach (even though he speaks no Spanish: The idea is that he'll speak Italian to an assistant coach, who'll then translate his instructions into Spanish. This is a good idea?).
5. Racing president Rodolfo Molina announces that the deal is done. Signed even.
6. Matthäus says, well, it's not really signed.
7. You see, Matthäus says, I need to clear the job with my wife (#4), 22-year-old Ukranian model Kristina Liliana, who is worried about continuing her modeling career in Argentina. This is understandable as, well, he's already been divorced three times.
   
8. Matthäus announces that the couple will visit Buenos Aires to make sure it is all todo bien.
9. Perhaps intimidated by how much Racing sucks--or daunted by Nicole Neumann's work on Showmatch--Matthäus and Liliana wonder if modeling (or coaching) in Argentina is a good idea.
10. Matthäus asks that he be housed in the luxe Hotel Faena as coach.
11. The club says , "Er, not so much."
    
12. Matthäus decides that he will neither visit Argentina nor take the Racing job.
13. Matthäus figures that this decision is of such minor importance that it's okay to inform Racing management by SMS text message.
14. Racing's Molina goes ballistic.
    
15. Racing continues to suck.
    

[Foto: Flickr]

Delpo parades through Tandil

The "what is this tiny town that bred US Open champ Juan Martín del Potro" meme hits the LA Times with this October 10 article. Here's a September 19 radio story I did on Delpo's town for the public radio show "Only A Game".

Heads-up thanks to Jim Danky.

[Foto: Daniel Garcia/AFP/Getty Images]

GDP, then and now

In a fascinating NYT Economix post ominously titled What Happened to Argentina?, Harvard economist Edward Glaeser examines the causes of the steady descent of Argentina's economy over the last century.

A century ago, there were only seven countries in the world that were more prosperous than Argentina (Belgium, Switzerland, Britain and four former English colonies including the United States), according to Angus Maddison’s historic incomes database. In 1909, per capita income in Argentina was 50 percent higher than in Italy, 180 percent higher than Japan, and almost five times higher than in neighboring Brazil. Over the course of the 20th century, Argentina’s relative standing in world incomes fell sharply. By 2000, Argentina’s income was less than half that of Italy or Japan.

But why? Here, he trots out the usual demons and villains.

Peronism was not only protectionist, but it also favored large state enterprises and significant regulation of the economy. Neither strategy has been particularly good for growth. Argentina’s inbred banking system has historically had trouble weathering severe shocks. Decades of political instability have made property rights insecure and investment unattractive.

But that's not all. Glaeser digs deeper. In comparing Buenos Aires to Chicago, he notes that, "Chicago was a seedbed of technological innovations, including the skyscraper, the zipper and the electric washing machine. Buenos Aires’s entrepreneurs, such as the industrious Torcuato DiTella, often succeeded by importing American technologies, as DiTella did with gas pumps and refrigerators." Instead of inventing things, they sold things other people invented. And why did that happen? Education. Or, rather, the lack thereof. "Throughout the 19th century," he writes, "Chicago was almost completely literate, because the rural migrants who came to the city had been well educated in the common schools that dotted America’s farmland. By contrast, more than a fifth of Buenos Aires’s population was illiterate until 1900, reflecting the far lower levels of education in rural Argentina." And thus, "In 2000, Argentina was doing about as well as would be expected based on its education levels in 1900." Here's a graph showing that:


The question then: Can this be rectified? And will the government here try?