NPR lies about Argentine default

Of course, NPR is not alone. All the main-stream media slant the news to the profit of its big business owners and advertisers.

Center for Economic and Policy Research

Monday, 17 October 2011 15:41
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NPR's Planet Money made its entry in the Stake Your Claim game show with a segment on Friday that claimed that Argentina is suffering horribly as a result of its decision to default at the end of 2001. It turns out that Argentina has actually been doing quite well since its 2001 default as the most recent data from the IMF show.

[...]

As can be seen, Argentina was already in a severe recession prior to default. It had tied its currency to the dollar, which went through the roof following the East Asian financial crisis in 1997. While the United States could support the trade deficit that resulted from the over-valued dollar, Argentina could not. It eventually had no choice but to break its peg with the dollar and default on its debt in December of 2001. Its economy fell sharply in the next quarter, but had stabilized by the summer of 2002. It then began to grow rapidly and was above its pre-recession level by the end of 2004. It has continued to grow rapidly in the subsequent years, although the 2009 recession did bring growth to a halt for a year.

The IMF projects that Argentina's GDP this year will be almost 60 percent above its pre-recession level. This is where Planet Money's claim breaks down.

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