Globalization, the IMF, and International Banks in Argentina : The Model Economic Crisis

This book examines how the ideas, interests, and biases of international financial institutions, private banks, and the press affect economic and political change during periods of crisis. It suggests that the monetary and financial trials of Argentina then and now serve as a microcosm for the Western world’s current backlash against globalization.

Globalization, the IMF, and International Banks in Argentina: The Model Economic Crisis examines the meaning of mainstream globalization and how it relates to neoliberalism as policymakers, international institutions, and mainstream press combat attempts to economically and politically de-globalize. Christian Hernandez investigates how the logistics and policies of mainstream globalism have failed both the international institutions who promote it and the states they serve. Hernandez examines the case of Argentina as a microcosm of economic and financial distress that has now spread to the United States and Europe. The contents of this book interrogate the space for alternatives to globalization’s logics by focusing on the ways that ideas shape policy and normative understanding by examining the IMF-Argentine debt negotiations and the discourses of the financial press surrounding the Argentine Great Depression. Scholars of economics, Latin American studies, and political science will find this book particularly useful.