The fund seems to have won over its most fearsome critic

by The Economist – April 8, 2020

Few jobs are as daunting as minister of the economy of Argentina. But Martín Guzmán, who was given the post in December, has two things going for him. He is a brilliant student of unsustainable debt, which Argentina has in abundance, including $44bn owed to the imf and almost $100bn of foreign-currency debt owed to private lenders. And he is a protégé of Joe Stiglitz, a Nobel-prizewinning economist at Columbia University who once served as chief economist of the World Bank.

That close affiliation presumably helped endear him to Argentina’s powerful vice-president, Cristina Fernández, who flouts economic orthodoxy but is fond of citing Mr Stiglitz. And the celebrated economist’s warm endorsement also gave Mr Guzmán credibility in his dealings with the IMF—or so the government must have hoped when it appointed him.

Originally Published in The Economist. Read the entire story here.