In a follow-up to my Venezuela’s Woes post, I thought I’d touch on Argentina’s current dire situation.

Since going bankrupt in 2002, Argentina has enjoyed a brief resurgence followed by decisions reminiscent of those made by the leadership that brought it to ruin in the 90’s.

First, they nationalized the public pension fund. “Don’t worry, we’ll take over the management of the money set aside for the pensions of civil servants, we’ll do a better job than an independent manager.”

Alrighty then.

Since then they’ve nationalized YPF, the biggest oil producer in Argentina. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-wagner/argentinas-expropriation-_b_1431288.html).

And then, in the first week of Feb 2013 the government banned retail prices increases so as to curb inflation (http://www.stuartwilde.com/2013/02/argentina-update-govt-now-bans-advertizing/).

And finally, this week the government banned supermarkets and electronic retailers from advertising in independent newspapers.  Why? So that the reporting of inflation can be stifled.

Nationalisation, expropriation, inflation and censorship. Awesome.

We have some big problems in South Africa, but at least we have real-time case studies to learn from on how NOT to run a country.