And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) Wall Street, the IMF, and the Bankrupting of Argentina

This is a lively, even frisky account of the 2001 Argentine financial crash. Written by a journalist with great passion and brio, it enlivens what can sometimes seem the most dull of disciplines (macroeconomics) - reminding us that macro isn't just impenetrable dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models (why, God, whyyy), it's people and money and market panic. It's big, and it can have huge, rippling effects throughout countries and the world. Indeed, I haven't seen dismal science humanized this well since n+1's excellent Diary of a Very Bad Year (about the 2008 global financial crisis).

Blustein's pen is wide-ranging, knowledgeable, sardonic and scathing: it spares no one. We get some great peeks into the inner workings, and culture, of the IMF. We get a fairly damning critique of the IMF for being too circumspect in dealing with zombie countries: countries with enormous foreign debt, floundering in a recession, unwilling to loosen their dollar-peso currency peg. Indeed, Blustein's main message is that Argentina should have cut the cord much sooner, letting the Argentine peso float and then, presumably, plummet. The wings here are clearly burning, the best we can do is cushion the fall!

There are similarly damning portrayals of Wall Street emerging market traders; and then vulture-like “rogue creditors”, who hunt for the heavily indebted in order to buy the debt cheap and then sue the debtor for the full amount later, thereby reaping great profit. Did you know the Styrofoam billionaire (via inheritance, ahem), Kenneth Dart, is basically a vulture creditor on Argentina? Suing them when they underwent this massive country-level default, holding out for ten years (!), and trying to seize Argentine assets? This blew my mind. Blew. My. Mind. Make a better little white crumbly cup, Kenneth, for the love of Jesus! Stop capitalizing on the economic agony of millions! This is not what capitalism is about! My Lord. Talk about parasite. (And no wonder Argentina doesn't like him and has called him “enemy number one”.) Blustein, indeed, uses Dart as an unsavory symbol for the collective action problem: when creditors refuse to accept revised terms when a country is in free-fall, unable to pay its bills. And damn, Kenneth. Just damn. I still can't wrap my head around this complete moral vacuum, this incredible greed.

Phew. Shake it off. Shake it off.

ANYWAY. So, as you can see, macro can be something which empassions, fellow microeconomists! And what of ye, non-economist people? Will you like and enjoy this book? I think yes, as long as you (like me) clarify early on what the difference between “deficit” and “debt” is (hey, it's been YEARS since my last macro class). But even then, Blustein is a journalist, and so he writes for the general reader. And this is a great primer, and great fodder, on the big issues of macro, globalization, and our increasingly, crazily interconnected financial systems. Recommended.